Let It Rain, Why Women Should Be Rich

SHARK WEEK FOR AUNT FLO

When Flo Health announced its recent investment of $200 million for its period-tracking app I was not prepared for the uproar it caused.

For eight years I’ve been told mySysters, the perimenopause and menopause digital platform I founded, is too niche because ‘it’s only for women.’

A period-tracking company getting a huge investment deal must signal changing attitudes in the investment landscape, right?

Ah, but then the social media posts began and the source of the outrage was clear–the Flo Health founders are men and (apparently) they only started the company to make money.

How. Dare. They.

THE DOUBLE STANDARD

This is the problem I have with the current conversation: if it’s wrong for two men to launch a women’s health company solely for profit, the inference is that a period-tracking company founded by women would have a more benevolent motive than merely chasing dollar signs.

We expect, even demand, women to have noble reasons for starting companies.

We don’t allow women to start companies for the sole pursuit of money, and by extension we don’t allow women to desire wealth.

Women are required to bare our souls, to tell our story of WHY we do what we do and we do it ad nauseam.

I’ve told thousands of total strangers, through podcasts and speaking engagements, the intimate details about my life and body and how my own perimenopause led to the founding of mySysters.

LADY BUSINESS

Have you ever stood on stage in front of four hundred people and told them the in-depth details of how you were so incontinent for six months you were practically housebound?

Have you ever had to recount to potential investors how doctors said your painful symptoms were psychosomatic because you were jealous of the attention you were giving to your young children, your mother with dementia and a cancer-survivor husband who then survived a heart attack at forty-eight?

I have, many times, and it was humiliating, but I had to pretend it was empowering because that’s what we expect of women founders.

An engineer I know worked for a startup making a medical device to reduce blockages in men’s urethras.

The (male) founders didn’t have personal stories of urethra blockages.

Yet we require women to take deeply personal stories of pain and suffering and turn them into lessons of ‘empowerment’ to justify building a business.

Imagine if women could walk into meetings with investors with a pitch deck and say, “I started this company because there’s profit potential here.”

But we’re not allowed to do that.

We’re required to give a piece of ourselves and IT’S EXHAUSTING.

Just once I’d like to walk in say, “Boys, I’m in this for the fame and fortune,” and they’d nod because hey, that’s legit, and they’d write me a check with lots of zeros and if that project goes down in flames I’d go back and tell them my vague AI idea and they’d write me check with even MORE zeros because I’m a visionary, everybody I pay says so.

I admit I created mySysters out of personal need and desperation (see incontinence and housebound above) but I deserved the opportunity to do it for fame and fortune if I hadn’t been confined to the bathroom.

ARE WE THERE YET?

I was eight years old when women in the US won the right to open bank accounts in their own names.

When I was nineteen, US women won the right to get business loans without fathers or husbands co-signing.

FINANCIAL power leads to ECONOMIC power, and while women have more financial power now than we did fifty years ago, there remains significant disparity between the economic power of women and men, and as you may have noticed recently, economic power buys a lot of POLITICAL power.

Instead of demanding Flo Health’s male founders justify their reasons for creating a product for women, let’s FREE WOMEN from justifying their reasons for creating products and companies.

Let’s FREE WOMEN to create products FOR MEN–for andropause, benign prostatic hyperplasia, chronic prostatitis and prostate cancer.

Let’s make it acceptable–-no, scratch that–let’s make it ADVISABLE for women to WANT to make money, to become financially independent, even WEALTHY.

When more WOMEN are wealthy, then more women will become INVESTORS.

That’s the key to systemic change.

Cindy Moy Carr is the founder and CEO of Vorsdatter Limited which created mySysters, the world’s first mobile platform for perimenopause and menopause. She’s an attorney, journalist and author, including the ABA’s Guide to Healthcare Law. She divides her time between Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, where Vorsdatter Ltd is based, and Minneapolis, MN, where the center of the universe (aka her grandchild) resides.

mySysters is an app for women in perimenopause and menopause. It was created by Cindy Moy Carr when she needed a symptom tracker for perimenopause and found there were none. She created one for herself, her sister and their friends. Hence, mySysters. Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Day named mySysters the Best App for Women in Perimenopause and a Must Have App for Women.