Mother Knows The Best

Entrepreneur Katherine Ryder describes the roadblocks she faced in setting up Maven, her successful women’s-health start-up, in a gender-biased industry.

- Katherine Ryder

IT’S A CHILLY SATURDAY MORNING in March and here I am, in my thirty-sixth week of pregnancy, sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, reading through some of Maven’s earliest rejection notes from investors. They date back to 2014, when Obama was still in office, health-care reform was moving in a generally progressive direction, and digital health funding was setting records. The polite rebuffs to my start-up proposal, mostly in staccato sentences over email, were peppered with lines like “uncertain of the size of the opportunity in women’s health” or “need more proof of concept in this new market.” Other rejections didn’t require a note; they happened in spotless venture-capital offices and were mostly one-sided conversations filled with silence, boredom, and the occasional comment that relegated women’s health to birth control and abortions. My daughter kicks. A woman feeds her newborn nearby. There aren’t many female founders who run tech companies focused in this area, but the ones I’ve met have similar stories and have confronted these unexpected odds.