Twenty -five years ago, Joanna Strober invested in a company called Babycenter. Twenty -five years later, the company continues to serve women, “many women,” says Strober. She was a pregnant risk investor at the time she made Babycenter's investment, and helped generate a bigger idea: for too long, he says, the story for women who face challenges has been “just dealing with that.”
“It's a strange thing … And that is really unhealthy, and we have to change that,” Strober said at the recent CNBC Changemakers summit in Los Angeles.
For Chelsea Hirschhorn, having her first child took her to “totally disappointed” with the abyss between the image of the new paternity that was marketed and the reality he experienced. “The perfect image of image raising was overwhelming for a new father,” he said. “There was a great dichotomy between the content I was consuming and the first -line experience at 3 am”
Hirschhorn says there were no data available at that time to corroborate what he felt because the issue was little studied and without financing funds, so he “assumed” the category of child health and well -being. “For some reason,” says Hirschhorn, had “the conviction of thinking that he could fix this.”
While there is a distinction between the health challenges on which the two CEOs and the founders focus, not all women will be pregnant, but they will all go through menopause, a great idea unites the two women leaders: there are products, treatments and services that can meet critical needs in a unattended and undervalued market.
“We have this idea that perimenopause is at a given time and people think they have to suffer for a long time before they get adequate attention, but what we say is that it does not have to suffer at all,” Strober shared at the Changemakers summit. “As soon as you are 30 years old and anything begins to feel bad, you must get help. The idea of suffering is really outdated,” he said. “Women have been trained to suffer too long.”
Strober and Hirschhororn were appointed in the CNBC Changemakers 2025 list (the actress and businesswoman Naomi Watts, who has become a main defender of the health of menopause as founder and creative director of Stripes Beauty after fighting with early menopause in the apogee of her early fame of her early fame of her early fame Hollywood was also among the 2025 change creators).
At the Summit of Changemakers on April 8, the two CEOs of the CEOs shared advice and lessons of their successes that bring new business ideas to medical care. These are some of the key issues mentioned in a discussion with Kate Rooney of CNBC.
Women have to advocate themselves
In addition to “the shortage of information” that exists to prepare women for the reality of paternity, the educational content for women has been censored when they are related to issues related to reproductive health. That was something that Hirschhorn learned once he started Frida, a time when it was “almost impossible,” he says, finding authentic narratives on the subject and led her to create frida uncensored.
“The sixty percent of women's health advertisements, or content in general, has been some way or form, rejected or filtered,” he said. That is not only online but on linear television, part of what Hirschhorn calls a “very gender dichotomy”, citing the fact that the male health and sexual welfare content is approved at a significantly higher rate. That leaves it “incredulous,” he said, and is a call to action to change that women's health is a subject of provocation to a public health issue.
“Women have to advocate themselves,” he said. “Women cannot be complacent, and this goes beyond medical care. This can promote real change, in retail trade … in each facet of life,” he added.
Strober said that when I was building Midi Health, it was clear that an important challenge would be to work with the codes created by the insurance industry for menopause, in effect, another form of institutional censorship. Midi Health decided to position himself as a primary care provider on the network that had a specialty in menopause and turned out to be a “really effective” way to gain traction, he says, and now he has insurance coverage nationwide with all large insurance companies in the United States.
“They will not necessarily cover sexual health problems, but they will cover primary care, so it simply subsume it,” he explained. Seeing menopause as part of women's health, he says, the company was able to create a refund mechanism that meets insurance standards.
Menopause can have a great impact on professional success
That insurance coverage is a big problem, because research shows that lack of treatment with menopause can have a high cost when it comes to women's races. A study that Strober pointed out during Changemakers discussion discovered that at the time of half of the race, when women should obtain their greatest successes in the workplace, change to menopause can stop them.
Strober said that the growing body of research details how menopause can result in work discrimination, with women who leave jobs, or not to increase increases or promotions due to symptoms, and also because they do not believe they can obtain the treatment they need.
“If you think you have something that cannot be fixed, it is very shameful, and that means that people go back to what they are doing,” Strober said. “They are scared,” he added.
That can be the experience called Brain Fog, and also stifling.
“You lose energy during the hot flashes,” Strober said. “People do not have so much confidence. But if they treat you for it, 'it's just a hot flash' and you can recover power,” he added.
Women's health is, above all, a 'very good business'
Hirschhorn says that for numbers, there is still great potential in the women's health market.
It is estimated that it grows to $ 60 billion by 2027, according to the data cited in the event, and that is despite the fact that less than 4% of the expense and the investment in R&D of medical care go to the category, a “seismic gap,” he said.
It is a well -known fact in the consumer investigation that women dominate spending at home, but Hirschhorn said in the Frida market that there is a “viral” opportunity that is underestimated.
“Creating products for women based on real need creates a virality that is difficult to recreate with other demographic data,” he said. “These women not only buy their products, they are selling them to their communities and friends. We call that 'Mother's word,” said Hirschhorn. “It is a great non -exploitation opportunity,” he added.
As a former risk investor, Strober said it is important to accept that “people are not dying to invest in women's health,” but added that when it can show the growth that companies like Midi Health are publishing, that will not stop a company. “We are the fastest growing digital health company, probably always, honestly,” he said. “We are growing incredibly fast because women really need access to this attention and cannot get it elsewhere,” he added.
Similar to the “virality” experienced by Frida, Strober says that the business model is based on itself. “Once you deals with one thing for women, they return to you for something else, and if you develop this trusted platform for them, where they become your patient in the long term, that is a good business,” he said.
“We don't say it is a women's business, we say it is a really good business,” he added.
The 'Bros' have dominated the health of longevity for too long
That opportunity and the realities without paternity filter have now grown up to Frida to more than 150 products, which cover everything, from conception to post-participation and breastfeeding attention, and beyond. “My four children are a seedbed of inspiration and my days of 'sucking of mucos' have almost ended,” said Hirschhorn. But she added: “There are the same problems, you only need a different set of tools.”
In Midi Health, Strober says that the next great opportunity to unlock is to make connections between the health of menopause and longevity. “If you take care of yourself in your 40, you can really avoid many of the diseases that come in your 80s, so we have been thinking a lot about this longevity market,” Strober said. “Everything is Bros, all the brothers who are out there and talk about wanting to live at 150. We just want to take care of ourselves. We don't mind living up to 150. We just want to be healthy grandmothers,” he said.
“What do we do, how do we take care of our brains, bones and hearts to age healthy?” Strober asks.
She says that there are many treatments, products and services still to develop health companies that will help women of 40, 50 and 60 years to answer that question better.
Watch the full video after the Changemakers Summit to learn more about the critical health gaps that women face throughout life.
