8 investors discuss what's ahead for reproductive health startups in a post-Roe world

One of the most pressing issues the U.S. has to prepare for, perhaps, is the future it faces after the toppling of Roe v. Wade.

Come the midterm elections, voters will weigh in on candidates and, consequently, measures that will dictate abortion access and other human rights issues. The role venture capital must play in all of this is becoming clearer: There has been a push to fund more reproductive health companies, include healthcare access in ESG investments and reevaluate the safest places to open a business for women employees.

To get a clearer picture of what lies ahead, TechCrunch+ surveyed eight investors and learned what they think venture’s role should be in a post-Roe world. McKeever Conwell, the founder of RareBreed Ventures, noted the tenuous relationship between venture money and ethics. He said although there are some who might not care about human rights issues in relation to investing, he wants to double down on funding startups focused on reproductive health.

Theodora Lau, the founder of Unconventional Ventures, said she believes more venture investors should take political stances on issues. “Access to healthcare is a right; it’s not politics,” she said. “These are existential issues that should concern all of us, regardless of our role.”

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“Where legislation continues to lag, it’s important for technology to take a proactive stance to bring transparency to current and future innovations and mitigate the kinds of risks we see today.” Hessie Jones, partner, MATR Ventures

Meanwhile, Hessie Jones, a partner at MATR Ventures, said the due diligence process needs to go deeper to identify the risks of developing new technology. “Due diligence needs to expand past the point of founder ‘intentions.’ We have to ask ourselves: What is the potential that this technology can be used for other use cases beyond its current intention? What is the impending risk to people or groups?”

Finally, nearly everyone we spoke to is keeping an eye out for change that could come in November. “Vote,” Lau said. “With your voice, with your action and with your wallet.”

We spoke with:

Hessie Jones, partner, MATR Ventures
Lisa Calhoun, Gary Peat and William Leonard, Valor Ventures
Mecca Tartt, executive director, Startup Runway
Ed Zimmerman, founding partner, First Close Partners
Theodora Lau, founder, Unconventional Ventures
McKeever Conwell, founder, RareBreed Ventures

Hessie Jones, partner, MATR Ventures

What was your initial response to the overturn of Roe? What are other impacts the overturn of Roe has had on your firm and investment strategy?

I grew up in the Catholic system, which vehemently opposed abortion and the right of women to decide what to do with their own body. I am also a Canadian, and our laws regarding abortion and the rights of the mother are very different than the U.S.

The Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health decision implies the rights referenced under the 14th Amendment — specifically, a woman’s right to privacy under the “due process clause,” which affirmed her right to choose whether to have an abortion — leaves all civil right precedents vulnerable to being overturned.

The assumed misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment in this opinion turns back the clock when it comes to the rights women have been fighting for years.

Where legislation continues to lag, it’s important for technology to take a proactive stance to bring transparency to current and future innovations and mitigate the kinds of risks we see today: Exposure of personal information, data surveillance and the use of personal information that will ultimately inflict harm on individuals and groups.

This is already happening, and now it has found its way into communities where reproductive data is leveraged against the data subjects.

Will the Dobbs decision affect the criteria you use to conduct due diligence?

Absolutely! Apps that have been used to help women, like Flow, Glowing and Cue, can be weaponized with warrants to identify those who are or may be seeking abortions. The data collected by these apps and Big Tech can be sold, breached or acquired via government warrants without taking into consideration the rights of the subject.

Due diligence needs to expand past the point of founder “intentions.” We have to ask ourselves: What is the potential that this technology can be used for other use cases beyond its current intention? What is the impending risk to people or groups? As well, we must, at the very least, demand privacy-by-design standards and the security of the infrastructure acquiring any personal data.

We must scrutinize founders’ intentions, how the data will be used, who the partners are, to what extent data will be shared and for what purposes. We’ve come to a perilous crossroads where technology has contributed to harms, and we now must put the onus on founders to be more accountable for what they’re building.

Will your firm write more checks into reproductive health startups in 2022 and 2023?

Our intention is to support technology that solves critical problems. The underrepresented — women, Black, indigenous, people of color, LGBTQ2S — will be most impacted by Dobbs, especially those in marginalized communities. We will consider any viable solution that comes from underrepresented founders that serves to address reproductive health in these communities.

There’s a woeful lack of education around reproductive healthcare. Do you see an opportunity in the intersection of edtech and reproductive health?

It takes a village. I see opportunities for accelerators, women’s health communities and organizations that support underrepresented founders. Any health tech offering needs to include an educational component as well as partnerships to ensure users are properly informed and supported across the product lifecycle.

Should more venture investors and founders take public stances on issues like abortion access that some view more through a political lens than as a healthcare matter?

This is a human issue. It strikes at the heart of human rights, privacy and poverty. Venture capitalists are now hovering across scalable technologies and those that take into consideration the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

We are at a critical juncture, where the tech we support with our dollars must have a sustainable component. Venture capital has a responsibility to defend its investments and ensure that it takes a stance on the issues investors care deeply about. This type of influence is necessary in an industry traditionally enamored by unicorns.

With U.S. midterm elections around the corner, what are other potential issues you are closely watching as they pertain to your work? How much more often are you forced to pay attention to the political process as part of your work as an investor?

Legislation dealing with data privacy, the ethics of artificial intelligence and antitrust legislation are all relevant issues that will have direct impact on all technology as well as the customers they serve.

As investors, these should all be on the table.

How do you prefer to receive pitches? What’s the most important thing a founder should know before they get on a call with you?

We are open to referrals. We also have an intake form on our website should companies wish to reach us. Otherwise, please reach out directly.

Before founders get on a call with us, there should be a clear agenda. In most cases, it will be a pitch or initial screen. In these cases, they should know whether they qualify (based on sector, stage and market traction) beforehand. Then they should be ready to defend their company’s USP and addressable market opportunity.

If the call is not about pitching their company, they should clearly communicate what they need and why.

I’m always open to cold pitches via email.

Lisa Calhoun, Gary Peat and William Leonard, Valor Ventures

What was your initial response to the overturn of Roe? What are other impacts the overturn of Roe has had on your firm and investment strategy?

Calhoun: Shock. It’s the first time in history that the Supreme Court has taken away a fundamental right, a right to make healthcare and self-determination choices for over half the U.S. population.

Peat: Shock and disbelief, sadness and anger. Our portfolio companies provide healthcare benefits. With Roe v. Wade overturned, all employers who provide health insurance have to consider reproductive health benefits that are competitive.

The largest, most successful, tech firms like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. are setting the example by providing support for the added burden of having to travel for reproductive health now that it varies wildly state to state. To compete, our portfolio companies will need to do the same.

Will the Dobbs decision affect the criteria you use to conduct due diligence?

Peat: Not much. Every tech-driven company we invest in provides healthcare benefits and has the same issues to address that trendsetters like the tech giants have already addressed. Healthcare benefits now include support for the added burden and costs of employees’ reproductive health.

Which areas of reproductive health (such as egg freezing) do you see the most potential for disruption given these laws? How do you predict this tech will perform in the coming years?

Leonard: Over the last year, we’ve met several startups bringing reproductive health data to the blockchain. The tracking, ownership and application of particular biospecimens can now be more secure with this technology.

With such sensitive data potentially being stored on a decentralized and immutable infrastructure like the blockchain, the quality, longevity and use cases of this reproductive data can bring transparency for patients and providers. This and other adjacent technologies can without a doubt reshape how reproductive health is administered and managed.

Employee benefits are a major avenue for many people to access reproductive healthcare, given the costly nature of many procedures. How do you see enterprise-facing reproductive healthcare companies evolving in the coming years?

Peat: The smart ones will adapt and find a way to help employees and dependents overcome new barriers to healthcare access. In this case, it’s the added cost and other burdens imposed by the Dobbs decision on reproductive healthcare.

Should more venture investors and founders take public stances on issues like abortion access that some view more through a political lens than as a healthcare matter?

Calhoun: Yes. Culture is a choice. We create it in real time. Speaking up and out about your point of view is an act of self-respect, respect for our country and respect for each other.

Calhoun: Valor is based in Atlanta. Our state’s choice to enforce a six-week abortion ban is going to affect the global innovation economy looking to Atlanta for leadership. Overall, this adds a heavy “tax” on Georgia employers and startups attempting to attract top talent competitively.

How do you prefer to receive pitches? What’s the most important thing a founder should know before they get on a call with you?

We are open to cold pitches and have backed several founders that way. This link helps founders get in touch with our investment team.

Mecca Tartt, executive director, Startup Runway

What was your initial response to the overturn of Roe?

Sadness, disbelief and disappointment knowing that women’s rights are being removed.

In terms of your workplace and advising founders on their work cultures, how do you plan to help employees access reproductive healthcare?

Offering great healthcare is costly, but it must be the standard. When your employees are well and feel valued, they want to perform at a higher level and you will have a higher retention rate.

Which areas of reproductive health (such as egg freezing) do you see the most potential for disruption given these laws and how do you predict this tech will perform in the coming years?

Over the past 10 years, women have been waiting longer to have children so they can establish their career first. However, the aging process does not slow down, which in turn means more women are dealing with infertility issues.

There will be an uptick of more women freezing their eggs due to more women working on their careers. With these laws, we will see more women freezing their eggs in order to rule out any health concerns with the baby.

In previous years, including fertility benefits was seen as an extra perk. However, in years to come, that will become a norm for many. I have met couples who specifically left one company to go to another due to the benefits and coverage for fertility.

Will your firm write more checks into reproductive health startups in 2022 and 2023?

Yes. Startup Runway writes grants to minority- and women-led founders at the pre-seed stage.

There’s a woeful lack of education around reproductive healthcare. Do you see an opportunity in the intersection of edtech and reproductive health?

There is a significant opportunity in edtech and women’s reproductive health. African American women in the U.S. have the highest maternal mortality rate, which is preventable. A development in edtech could truly change the statistics.

Should more venture investors and founders take public stances on issues, like abortion access, that some view more through a political lens than as a healthcare matter?

Silence can signal acceptance. I do believe that you have to speak, do and act to bring about change, but it should always be in alignment with your values.

How do you prefer to receive pitches? What’s the most important thing a founder should know before they get on a call with you?

For founders, the direct link to apply for grants is here.

Ed Zimmerman, founding partner, First Close Partners

What was your initial response to the overturn of Roe? What are other impacts the overturn of Roe has had on your firm and investment strategy?

The overturn adversely impacts human beings in our country (and elsewhere) but also erodes the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and the judiciary. It will also result in the loss of life (we’ve seen studies on the impact on suicide rates of outlawing abortions). There’s a ton more.

We’ve been advising clients and asking funds and board members to change policy and to make protecting rights part of this process.

We want to invest in people and firms who are going to protect and expand reproductive rights. Obviously, the whole realm of medical care for people who have a uterus has been impacted (i.e., endometriosis, certain cancers, lupus, etc.).

Will the Dobbs decision affect the criteria you use to conduct due diligence?

It is definitely something we are interested in, and it will impact diligence and decisions. ESG and DEI are impacted by a fund’s position on Dobbs. How you also face the public on it should have an impact as well.

Will your firm write more checks into reproductive health startups in 2022 and 2023?

I do that personally, and yes, we will.

There’s a woeful lack of education around reproductive healthcare. Do you see an opportunity in the intersection of edtech and reproductive health?

Yes, very much.

Should more venture investors and founders take public stances on issues, like abortion access, that some view more through a political lens than as a healthcare matter?

100% for sure!

I am watching a number of them. I am also working through a number of nonprofits — I have a leadership role at the Center for Policing Equity, and we are working to decriminalize reproductive rights, for instance.

How do you prefer to receive pitches? What’s the most important thing a founder should know before they get on a call with you?

Email ezimmerman@lowenstein.com and for fund managers, copy info@firstclosepartners.com. See FirstClosePartners.com on equitable sourcing.

Blanketing the market with cold outreach can be hard. If there is a call or Zoom or something, then the person asking for funding should have done some background on the person they are pitching. Too often we see situations in which the person pitching is focused on their pitch and does not have familiarity with their audience.

Theodora Lau, founder, Unconventional Ventures

What was your initial response to the overturn of Roe? What are other impacts the overturn of Roe has had on your firm and investment strategy?

Disbelief, as the ruling has far deeper implications (on social rights and privacy, for example) beyond the right to choose.

To be honest, I am not too sure (it’s like reading tea leaves). I think the issue at hand (unfortunately) is highly dependent on the political environment, and for the foreseeable future, there will be a lot of uncertainty as to what they can/cannot do.

There’s a woeful lack of education around reproductive healthcare. Do you see an opportunity in the intersection of edtech and reproductive health?

I think there is a lot of opportunity in education and advocating for healthcare in general. Healthcare is — and must be — a fundamental right for all, not a privilege for some. And access can’t be the cheesecloth approach that we have right now.

Should more venture investors and founders take public stances on issues, like abortion access, that some view more through a political lens than as a healthcare matter?

YES!!! Access to healthcare is a right. It’s not politics; it’s a basic right, just like access to clean water, food and education. These are not political issues. They are existential issues that should concern all of us, regardless of our role.

Caregiving and retirement policy is an area that I’ve been following closely for a few years now. They impact everyone in our society. Caregiving is infrastructure. If we can’t provide adequate support for caregivers (e.g., paid time off for parents to take care of their newborn and kids, or for adult children to take care of their aging parents), we can’t create an equitable society that allows all genders to advance.

How do you prefer to receive pitches? What’s the most important thing a founder should know before they get on a call with you?

A deck would work. When I talk to founders, I want to know about them as people first. I want to know who they are, what drives them and why they do what they do. I think a person’s character and motivation are way more important than what they are building.

Cold pitches are OK sometimes if I am not too busy! My email is here.

McKeever Conwell, founder, RareBreed Ventures

What was your initial response to the overturn of Roe? What are other impacts the overturn of Roe has had on your firm and investment strategy?

Utter disgust. The Supreme Court has now shown they have the power and they have always had the power to set precedent that leads to federal laws in this country. But now they’ve shown the ability to not only say something but also to take it back and reverse it.

What does that have to do with my firm and our investment strategy? Not much, because rights are rights; they’re human rights. But that’s not our job. Our job is to make money for folks. A lot of the folks that we’re making money for are people who don’t care about these rights. So that is the reality of the situation.

It does make me, as a firm, want to double down on investing in companies that deal with women’s health and maternal health, and make sure we are upping our efforts on that. But does it change my investment strategy, per se? No, not really.

As a first-time Black fund manager, before I can go on any crusades, I have to put points on the board and show that we’re doing good work. So I’m focused on returning capital to our LPs. Hopefully, maybe one day down the line, I might have a different answer to that question.

Will the Dobbs decision affect the criteria you use to conduct due diligence?

Probably not, because we invest very early. I invest so early that most of my companies don’t even have HR policies for a year or two, or maybe more. There are usually just two or three people in their apartment working on something.

But if they are more established, in due diligence, we will ask about their policies around women’s health and supporting women for maternal health purposes. As a Christian, I get both sides, but as somebody who is a marginalized individual, I tend to side with the marginalized folks first.

But when I’m conducting the diligence, we’ll ask that question. Will it change much in the investment process? I don’t know yet.

In terms of your workplace and advising founders on their work cultures, how do you plan to help employees access reproductive healthcare?

We offer six months of maternity or paternity leave with full health benefits, which involves anything that you have to do to deal with your health in this period.

Hopefully, we have healthcare to support that. If we don’t, we will find ways to help people get through that, because reproductive health is really important to me and the firm.

Which areas of reproductive health (such as egg freezing) do you see the most potential for disruption given these laws and how do you predict this tech will perform in the coming years?

Very often when we talk about reproductive health, we talk about it from a woman’s perspective. I am excited for technologies where the man will take responsibility. What are treatments that a man can take to support reproductive health? What are things a man can do to his body to improve reproductive health? What are forms of birth control that men can use and be held accountable for that?

I think we’re going to see new and innovative companies come up. I think we’re going to see companies that are dedicated wholly to reproductive health.

Will your firm write more checks into reproductive health startups in 2022 and 2023?

Probably not in 2022. We’re getting to the end of life for Fund I, and we’ll be going to market for our next fund very soon. But I am planning to do deep dives into startups in that space.

I definitely want to get our eyes on those companies and see if there are any that make sense for our firm to support.

Should more venture investors and founders take public stances on issues, like abortion access, that some view more through a political lens than as a healthcare matter?

That’s a tricky one. Some of these institutional LPs specifically prohibit things like that. I know of funds run by underrepresented or diverse individuals or who have taken money from institutional LPs that actually prohibit them from investing in companies that deal with women’s reproductive healthcare from one lens or another. That prohibits them from speaking out on certain things politically.

Yes, as an individual and being part of the public discourse and being a semi-public figure in spaces like venture capital, it can be very enticing for us to take on those mantles. But diverse fund managers early on in their funds are still trying to establish themselves.

It can be very prohibitive and could be the reason why you don’t get LP dollars. Should more venture investors and founders take public stances? Yeah, probably. But when you take a stance publicly on something so polarizing, it could affect your ability to build your company or firm.

I’m looking at the stuff regarding money. As the elections come by, I’m looking to see if there are going to be people getting in the office who support bills that do things like increase the number of LPs you can have in a fund.

I’m watching to see where people are falling in relation to same-sex marriages and things that deal with human rights. But is it part of the process and the work I do as an investor? Not necessarily and not as much. But I do have to follow the political landscape because you never know — something can pop up and completely change the industry or regulation.

How do you prefer to receive pitches? What’s the most important thing a founder should know before they get on a call with you?

Personally, I don’t really care how I receive a pitch. Whether it’s through a DM (direct message) or whether it was a cold email or an introduction, I don’t necessarily have a preference because you need to allow for serendipity to happen. Founders should know before they call me what stage we invest in. We do pre-seed and seed and sometimes we can make exceptions to go a little later. Know that we as a firm are industry agnostic, but we don’t do bio. So if you have a biotech company or a therapeutic company or something to that extent, we don’t do that. And keep in mind that while we’re industry agnostic, we do have a strong appreciation for go-to-market strategy.

If founders want to send me a cold pitch they can send me a DM on Twitter or LinkedIn, or if you manage to get my email address, which is really easy to figure out, in that message to me, you tell me two or three sentences about what your product does, two to three bullet points showing me what your major KPIs are, your key metrics that are either show that your product is growing and people are using it. Then if you want to put a little bit about you and the team, fine, but shouldn’t be any longer than that — it should be something I can scan pretty quickly. From there, it’s easy for me to decide if we want to set up a meeting.