WoW Woman in FemTech I Roya Pakzad, founder and CEO of Feminade
Roya Pakzad is the founder and CEO of Feminade, a digital health concierge helping women get to the root cause of their hormonal imbalance symptoms.
Prior to starting this company, Roya spent a little over a decade in Sales and Business Development in the Tech industry in Silicon Valley. She is a fierce doer with the mind of an engineer and the heart of an advocate. When she sees something that needs fixing, she doesn’t just raise a flag. She starts a company. In 2019 her passion to help all women take charge of their hormones and reproductive health led her on the path to launching Feminade. After living in CA for 18 years she decided to move to the next big tech hub, Miami, FL where she currently resides.
Feminade is the first digital health concierge helping women get to the root cause of their hormonal imbalance symptoms through at-home testing, Telehealth, personalized treatment plans, and education. Hormonal imbalance, which is grossly misdiagnosed and misunderstood by conventional medicine, is affecting 80% of women globally. These symptoms include heavy/irregular cycles, infertility, PCOS, hair loss, stubborn weight, brain fog, low libido, cystic acne, menopause, and more. Feminade is eliminating diagnostic errors and delays by providing women with accurate hormone data, medical education, and evidence-based treatment plans to address their symptoms.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
In 2008 I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Although I never worked as an engineer, I come from a family of engineers and was raised with an engineering mindset, which is making this world a better place through designing efficient products and processes. After graduating from school, I unintendedly got into Sales and Business Development, spending a little over a decade in the SaaS and eCommerce space in Silicon Valley. Throughout my 9-5 life I’ve always had a knack for entrepreneurship and dabbled into a few startup ideas, but never fully executed any of them until in 2019 after realizing the huge gap in women’s healthcare, the lack of information and data, especially around women’s hormone and hormonal birth control, I decided to figure out a solution to make root-cause medicine and medical education more accessible to women and this is how Feminade was born.
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
I never thought I would start a women’s health company to be very honest. I got into this industry by pure faith and a burning desire to re-invent access to healthcare for women.
One of the challenges of the FemTech industry is that despite getting some attention and funding from Venture Capitalists in recent years, it’s still overlooked by many investors. This is due to an overall lack of understanding of the unmet needs in women’s health and my hope is that investors spend more time researching this space.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in?
We launched our beta in early 2021, so it’s taken a little over 18 months to get to where we are now. Digital health startups are very operation-intensive and require a lot of manpower, especially the ones that offer Telehealth. For us, one of the biggest obstacles was not having a big enough team to be able to scale the business to where we wanted to by now, but with more funding, we’ll be able to overcome this obstacle.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
Bootstrapping a digital health startup during the pandemic for a year before raising venture capital has been a huge achievement, but more importantly having hundreds of successful case studies proving the efficacy of our healthcare protocols has been our biggest achievement to date.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
Feminade is my full-time job and my entire focus right now is fundraising, hiring, and growing the business.
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Absolutely! Representation matters and when women make strides in the Tech industry it encourages other women, especially the younger generation to explore opportunities in this space. Also, women think differently, and they bring a unique perspective to the table. This will lead to better problem solving and more productive team meetings. In a way diversity can help a company generate more revenue and become more successful.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
I’m bullish on 2 trends:
Personalized, root-cause medicine. Women are rejecting harmful band-aid solutions perpetuated by conventional medicine. They are seeking more information about their reproductive health and want to better understand the underlying causes of their symptoms. Feminade is one of the few companies innovating in this space, but I hope more startups join this movement. I imagine a future where root-cause care is the standard of care.
Remote patient monitoring: In recent years we’ve seen the rise of digital biomarker technologies such as the Oura ring, empowering consumers by giving them access to real-time biological data so they can understand how their lifestyle choices are impacting their health. I believe this will be a growing trend and we will see many companies innovate in this space for years to come.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
My advice to anyone who wants to start a career in FemTech is to join a company that is mission-driven rather than “numbers” driven and to join a startup that is offering a unique, innovative solution for a problem affecting a huge market.
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
There are many inspiring women in the digital health space, but I would like to recognize two fierce CEOs that I know: Dr. Amy Beckley, founder and CEO of Proov and Tara Viswanathan, Co-founder and CEO of Rupa Health. Proov is helping women navigate their fertility journey through innovative at-home ovulation testing. And Rupa Health has built an infrastructure to make root-cause medicine more accessible for both providers and patients. I admire these women not only for running successful startups, but for the incredible mission that they have embarked on.
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.