Short Mindvalley video in which Vishen Lakhiani announces the Mindvalley Book of the Year 2024 award to Marina Gerner for her book The Vagina Business. The speakers highlight a funding gap for women-led companies (40% of European startups are founded by women but receive roughly 2.4% of funding) and argue this underinvestment slows progress in female health and femtech; examples cited include the epidural (1950s) and forceps (18th century) as longstanding technologies still in use.
Questions this video answers
40%
Approximately 2.4%
1950s
18th century
Chapters
Every week at Mindmelly, we recommend a book to our audience. And at the end of the year, we give an award to the best book that our team has read, as well as a book club. So this year we'd like to give a big congratulations to Maria Gurner for her incredible book, the Vagina Business.
Congratulations, Marina Gerner, on winning award for your wonderful book the Vagina Business, which talks about femtech companies, why it is so hard to raise capital for femtech companies, how this actually is impacting female health and research into female health. Huge congratulations. This is such a necessary, such an important conversation in the contemporary world.
So just to give a statistic, if you look at companies led by woman, 40% of companies here in Europe are founded by women founders, but these companies only get roughly 2.4% of the funding. So there's a huge gap that we still have to understand why this is happening. But the repercussion of this is that a. A lot of companies that are founded with women, that deal with women issues, women health, don't get necessary funding. And so there's far less progress in that field.
So for example, when the woman is delivering, the latest technology to help her deliver and to deal with pain was invented in 1950s. It's epidural. We still use technology like forceps during delivery, which was invented in the 18th century.
There's not enough technological momentum in that particular field. And that's what this book is about.
This book is as much about female health as it is about investment. So as an investor, I also found it incredibly interesting and as I said, a very necessary conversation. So thank you, Marina.
