Venture capital has a gender arbitrage problem that the industry refuses to confront. The markets that serve women — beauty, wellness, grooming, fertility, menstrual health, and women’s health broadly — represent some of the most powerful, recession-proof consumer sectors in the world. They are vast, sticky, and predictable. They have loyal customers, high retention, and some of the highest willingness-to-pay in consumer categories. And yet the founders who raise the most money in these markets are not the female founders who use the products, understand the problems, or build the best companies.
They are overwhelmingly male.
Female founders — even those with deeper expertise, stronger traction, and superior products — must fight for scraps of capital. Meanwhile, male founders with weaker execution, incomplete products, or no product at all often walk away with the biggest checks.
This isn’t a gender debate. It’s an economic inefficiency, a pattern-matching failure, and increasingly, a costly mistake for venture capital. Because when you repeatedly fund the wrong founders for the wrong reasons, you don’t get innovation — you get autopsies.
Let’s start with the most glaring example.
The Manicure Robot Wars: Pattern Matching Over A Female Founder’s Performance
Few corners of consumer tech reveal the gender bias in venture capital more starkly than the robotic manicure category. Four companies entered the space. Only one ever shipped a functioning robot. And it wasn’t the one with the most capital.
Clockwork (Female Founder: Renuka Apte)
Clockwork built the only working robotic manicure system in the market — a proprietary AI, computer vision, and robotics platform capable of sub-millimeter precision. The robot: scans nails using high-resolution imaging, builds a 3D model in seconds, calculates an optimal polish path and applies a perfect coat in under 10 minutes. And unlike its competitors, Clockwork didn’t just demo a prototype — it deployed real machines into the real world.
Clockwork was generating revenue with 24 robots deployed nationwide, including at Rockefeller Center, UC Berkeley and multiple international airports. Its customers included Tishman Speyer, Hines, Pembroke, Paradies Lagardère, and XpresSpa, many of whom expanded contracts. The company had visibility into millions in ARR. And yet Clockwork built all of this on the smallest initial funding round in the category.
Clockwork ultimately raised approximately $7.36 million across four rounds, backed by investors such as Initialized Capital, Pipeline Capital Partners, MVP Ventures, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi.
As I reported in my earlier analysis, Default Alive: Survival of the Fittest Female Founders, female founders often survive in spite of capital scarcity, not because of investor enthusiasm. Clockwork is the case study.
10Beauty (Male Founded)
- Total funding: more than $54.5 million
- Product status before acquisition: none
- Product status after acquisition: launched “The 10” — using Clockwork’s technology
10Beauty raised the most money in the category over four rounds — more than five times Clockwork — yet had no deployed product before acquiring Clockwork.
And this is the part the industry still doesn’t talk about enough:
10Beauty only launched because it acquired Clockwork.
On February 25, 2025, multiple outlets — including PR Newswire, Yahoo Finance, KRON4, and FOX 2 — announced that 10Beauty had acquired Clockwork to “accelerate” its launch. In reality, it acquired the entire technological foundation needed to build a working manicure machine: AI models, algorithms, computer vision, robotics, and deployment infrastructure.
Clockwork had everything but the funding. 10Beauty had the funding but nothing working.
Nimble (Male Founded)
- Raised: approximately $10 million
- Delivered my Kickstarter unit over a year late
- The product arrived malfunctioning and nonfunctional
- User complaints across Reddit and community forums echo the same issues
Coral (Male Founded)
- Raised: $4.3 million in seed funding
- Investors: Crosslink Capital, Root Ventures, Tandem Capital, Y Combinator
- Status: shut down
- Product shipped: none
Coral raised millions, never built a product, and disappeared.
The Funding Pattern — in Black and White
The Irrefutable Irony
This is the part the headlines leave out:
- Clockwork had the least initial funding.
- Clockwork built the most.
- Clockwork shipped the most.
- Clockwork proved the most.
And yet fundraising was so difficult that the company became an acquisition target out of necessity, while the most well-funded male-founded company — 10Beauty — bought the innovation it could not build.
This is structural bias in its purest form: The male founders got the money, the valuation, and the spotlight —and then they bought the female founder’s work.
The male founders got the money, the valuation, and the spotlight —
and then they bought the female founder’s work.
Clockwork didn’t get acquired because it failed. Clockwork got acquired because it succeeded without enough capital to keep up with demand.
This isn’t a story about robots. It’s a story about who VCs choose to believe — and who they make prove themselves.
Femtech: Bigger Markets, Bigger Checks, Bigger Failures
If the manicure robot wars expose how venture capital misprices gender in a niche category, femtech reveals what happens when the same pattern repeats at national scale — in markets worth hundreds of billions.
Women’s health — from fertility to cycle tracking, menopause, maternal care, PCOS, pelvic health, diagnostics, and sexual wellness — is one of the largest, fastest-growing, and most chronically underserved categories in healthcare. Women drive 80% of household health decisions, 90% of fertility spending, and are the backbone of the healthcare economy. Yet the founders who receive the biggest checks in femtech — the industry literally built for women — are often not women at all.
And the outcomes tell a predictable story.
Flo Health — $200M+ Raised, Founded by Two Men
Flo Health is not the most widely used cycle-tracking tool today — many women now rely on Apple Health, Oura, and other wearables — but it is one of the most heavily funded, with more than $200 million in venture capital. And despite the category it serves, Flo was founded by two men: Dmitry and Yuri Gurski.
This is not about capability or intelligence. It’s about pattern recognition and structural incentives. Flo’s founders are talented, but their ability to raise one of the largest rounds in femtech history underscores an uncomfortable dynamic: The biggest checks in women’s health often go to male-founded companies.
And despite Flo’s scale, the company has faced repeated privacy controversies — issues that disproportionately impact women and should have been anticipated in a category fundamentally rooted in trust, biology, and bodily autonomy.
FemTec Health — $38M Raised → Collapse
Flo shows how male founders often receive the biggest checks in femtech — even as women increasingly turn to Apple Health, Oura, and wearables. FemTec Health shows what happens when that same pattern-matching funnels capital into teams without the expertise to execute: fast funding, faster failure.
FemTec Health was launched as an all-in-one personalized women’s health empire, promising a sweeping, AI-driven ecosystem that integrated: telehealth, fertility, beauty, diagnostics, supplements, consumer products and personalized care. Backed by $38 million, the company went on an acquisition spree: Birchbox, Mira AI, Liquid Grids, Awesome Woman, Nutrimedy and AvaScience-FM. On paper, it looked like a category-defining juggernaut. In reality, the company collapsed under its own weight.
According to Axios, FemTec Health burned through capital, failed to integrate its acquisitions, struggled with execution, and within 18 months was effectively out of cash — ultimately selling off its assets in a wind-down process.
You cannot brute-force your way into women’s health with capital alone.
You need founders who understand the problems, the users, and the physiology.
But this wasn’t just a business failure. This was a signal. You cannot brute-force your way into women’s health with capital alone. You need founders who understand the problems, the users, and the physiology.
Women’s health is not an “opportunity” to be assembled with capital and press releases. It is a category rooted in biology, trust, precision, and lived experience. When investors fund founders who don’t understand the terrain, the result is predictable:
- misaligned strategies
- failed integrations
- overpromised platforms
- under-delivered care
- expensive, unnecessary collapse
And yet the bias persists.
Male founders in femtech continue to raise disproportionately more than women — even when the product, the users, the biology, and the market dynamics require expertise women founders are more likely to possess.
Mira AI — Another Male-Led Beauty Tech Startup Caught in the Collapse
The story of Mira AI (also known as Mira Beauty) is especially revealing.
Mira was an AI-powered beauty search and recommendation engine that had raised $13.53 million across two rounds, backed by Unilever Ventures, Founders Fund, and others. The company was acquired by FemTec Health in 2021 for $28 million — a modest exit relative to the capital raised — and became part of its “unified women’s health platform.”
When FemTec unraveled, Mira unraveled with it. The company’s assets were later sold off to Longmont Acquisition Corporation along with several other FemTec subsidiaries.
Once again, the pattern repeats:
- Male founders receive more capital
- For less traction
- With weaker retention
- And end up inside distressed exits or rollups that later collapse
This is not coincidence. This is structure.
And the consequences are particularly damaging in women’s health, where misallocating capital doesn’t just waste money — it delays innovation in categories women urgently need.
Precision Skincare: Another Vanishing Act, Same Pattern
If the manicure robot wars and femtech rollups reveal how venture capital misprices technical innovation, precision skincare reveals something even more structural: male founders in beauty tech often receive more capital for weaker results, while female founders building deeper science, stronger community, and more durable products are systematically underfunded or unfunded — and forced to operate with ruthless efficiency.
One of the clearest examples is Revea, a male-led precision skincare startup backed by notable investors.
Revea — $9.5M Raised, Now Silent
Revea, a male-led precision skincare startup, raised $9.5 million across two seed rounds backed by Waldencast, Alpha Edison, Ulta Beauty, and Stanford-affiliated investors. The company positioned itself as a hyperspectral imaging and AI-driven skincare diagnostics company with precision skincare products.
Today, however:
- its website no longer supports purchases
- its social media accounts have been inactive for more than a year
- the company has not issued any public updates about its operations or future plans
- Founder & CEO Chaz Giles has since moved into a new role as CEO of AlidaLabs and not longer works at Revea and there is no new CEO either per LinkedIn
Revea has not made any public announcement about its current status, but the prolonged inactivity across all consumer-facing channels raises questions about the brand’s operational trajectory.
Revea did not respond to a request for comment.
The Female Founder Tax: When Traction Still Isn’t Enough
After looking across beauty robots, femtech rollups, and precision skincare, one truth becomes unavoidable: female founders are still expected to clear a higher bar while male founders clear none at all.
The bar isn’t simply higher for women; it moves. It shifts. It expands. It becomes a test of endurance rather than potential. Even when women deliver revenue, retention, loyal communities, enterprise contracts, or real, working technology, it rarely seems to be “enough.”
The bar isn’t simply higher for women; it moves. It shifts. It expands. It becomes a test of endurance rather than potential. Even when women deliver revenue, retention, loyal communities, enterprise contracts, or real, working technology, it rarely seems to be “enough.”
Clockwork proved this with painful clarity.
Despite building the only functioning manicure robot in the market — despite landing marquee customers, generating real revenue, and proving product-market fit — founder Renuka Apte still found fundraising extraordinarily difficult. She had the traction, the customers, and the technology — and she still struggled to raise capital.
Meanwhile, male founders in the same category raised more money, faster, with far less to show for it. In several cases, they raised millions with: no product, no traction, no deployments and no revenue.
Nimble raised more and shipped a malfunctioning device one year late. Coral raised millions and never built one. And 10Beauty raised the most — over $50 million — without shipping a single machine until it acquired Clockwork.
This is the Female Founder Tax: Women must prove everything, while men must merely pitch it.
Women must arrive with hard evidence. Men receive capital to go find it. Women are asked to demonstrate viability. Men are funded on possibility.
Women must arrive with hard evidence.
Men receive capital to go find it.
Women are asked to demonstrate viability.
Men are funded on possibility.
And when the market sees the results — when a better-funded, male-founded startup ends up acquiring the innovation a woman already built — the dynamics become impossible to ignore.
This isn’t just unfair; it’s economically wasteful.
Capital is being misallocated away from the founders who demonstrate execution and toward the founders who merely embody a familiar archetype. The cost of that misallocation shows up later — in collapses, distressed acquisitions, shutdowns, and “what could have been” companies that never had a chance.
And nowhere is this dynamic more visible — or more troubling — than in the stories of women who did everything right and were still forced to walk away.
Ami Colé: When A Female Founder’s Excellence Isn’t Enough
Few stories capture the emotional and economic cost of the Female Founder Tax more clearly than the rise — and closure — of Ami Colé.
Founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, a first-generation Senegalese American and alum of L’Oréal and Glossier, Ami Colé was one of the most culturally resonant beauty brands of the decade. It built:
- Sephora distribution
- A fiercely loyal, highly engaged community
- Viral, award-winning hero products
- A melanin-first POV that was intentional, elevated, and original
It was precisely the kind of brand the beauty industry claims it wants: inclusive, modern, loved, and rooted in the founder’s lived experience.
And yet behind the scenes, fundraising was brutally hard.
In her essay for The Cut, N’Diaye-Mbaye detailed the reality of raising capital as a Black woman: coded rejections, vague feedback, and an exhausting need to over-prove what customers already understood. Though she secured early funding, it was never enough to scale at the pace the brand deserved.
In September 2025, after years of undercapitalization, Ami Colé announced it would shut down. And then the industry revealed what venture capital failed to see.
Within weeks, SKIMS — valued at more than $5 billion — hired N’Diaye-Mbaye as its Executive Vice President of Beauty and Fragrance, putting her in charge of one of the most anticipated beauty launches in America.
It’s the starkest indictment of the beauty funding ecosystem in years:
Diarrha — the female founder whom investors underestimated — became the executive of the most culturally powerful brand in the country, hired the moment she became available. As Business of Fashion noted: “Diarrha is positioning herself for the kind of financial security that most will never reach, even as founders of successful companies.”
For many women — especially women of color — this is the real heartbreak of the fundraising process. From my experience as a female founder of color, it isn’t merely difficult. It is gutting. It is demoralizing. It is unreasonable.
You deliver traction, revenue, loyalty, innovation — and still hear “not yet.” At some point, the process becomes a hamster wheel. You run harder, and the wheel moves faster, but you never get anywhere. There comes a moment when, for your sanity, you finally step off.
And when you do, stepping into a well-resourced, culturally dominant brand can feel less like surrender and more like finally being valued.
The market saw her. SKIMS saw her. Venture capital did not.
Ami Colé may have closed, but its founder didn’t fall — she ascended. She will now have the resources, platform, and recognition she always deserved, even if she isn’t the founder this time.
The market saw her. SKIMS saw her. Venture capital did not.
Even Female VCs Bet on the Male Founders Instead of Female Founders
If the stories of Clockwork, FemTec Health, Mira AI, and Ami Colé suggest a structural bias in who gets funded, the next truth is even more uncomfortable: many of the investors disproportionately backing male founders in female-centric categories are women themselves.
One of the most uncomfortable truths in this ecosystem is that many of the investors disproportionately backing male founders in female-centric categories are women themselves. That’s not because female investors don’t believe in women — it’s because the venture system trains everyone, regardless of gender, to pattern-match toward the same narrow archetype of “the fundable founder.”
And representation alone hasn’t changed the outcomes.
According to PitchBook and Crunchbase:
- Women-only founding teams receive under 2% of all venture dollars.
- Women of color receive even less — including Black, Latina, Asian, and South Asian women, all of whom remain severely underfunded.
- Black women receive 0.27% of venture capital.
- Latina founders receive 0.4%.
- Asian and South Asian women aren’t even consistently broken out in reports — a silence that speaks for itself.
More women in VC hasn’t translated into more funding for women founders. The percentage has barely budged in a decade.
Why? Because changing who sits at the table doesn’t automatically change how the table works. The pattern of the “venture-backable” founder — white, male, technical, aggressively confident, Stanford/MIT adjacent — still dominates how deals get evaluated.
The result is predictable:
- Women VCs back male founders in beauty.
- Women VCs back male founders in femtech.
- Women VCs pass on female founders with traction, calling them “too early,” “too niche,” or “not defensible enough.”
This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s structural conditioning — reinforced by incentives, career risk, and the pressure to follow the pattern that already gets funded.
The cost is steep: women are rejected twice — first by men who underestimate them, and then by women who were hired to fix the system but never given the power or freedom to break the pattern.
Until venture capital redefines what “fundable” looks like — based on evidence, execution, and user understanding rather than familiarity — the numbers will not change.
VCs, Pattern Matching Isn’t a Strategy — It’s a Liability
The most dangerous myth in venture capital is that the market eventually “corrects” for bias. It doesn’t. Markets correct for performance. And right now, performance is revealing exactly where the bias lives.
The collapses in femtech rollups.
The distressed acquisitions in beauty tech.
The malfunctioning devices.
The ghosted Kickstarter products.
The quietly abandoned AI skincare companies.
These aren’t isolated events. They’re symptoms of a deeper structural failure:
Venture capital continues to overfund male founders in categories they don’t understand — and underfund the women building products women actually want.
Venture capital continues to overfund male founders in categories they don’t understand — and underfund the women building products women actually want.
This isn’t ideological. It’s financial.
When male founders are repeatedly funded without traction, without domain expertise, and in some cases without a product at all, the consequences show up later as shutdowns, fire sales, down rounds, distressed M&A, value destruction and yet another autopsy asking, “What happened?”
What happened is simple: The wrong founders got the money.
Meanwhile, women — especially women of color — are delivering traction, retention, community, PMF, and real innovation, only to be told:
“Not yet.”
“Come back later.”
“I’m not sure this is venture scale.”
And here’s the worst part: VCs are pattern-matching toward male founders with confidence over competence — not only toward founders with a history of exits or execution which makes sense. In any other industry, backing unproven operators over the people actually delivering results would be considered negligence. In venture, it’s still considered a strategy.
In any other industry, backing unproven operators over the people actually delivering results would be considered negligence. In venture, it’s still considered a strategy.
But the market is already writing the indictment. Clockwork. Ami Colé. FemTec. Mira AI. Revea. The warning signs are already here.
If VCs continue mispricing female talent and overfunding male pattern matches, the next wave of startup autopsies will be predictable — and preventable.
The beauty and femtech industries are too large, too culturally influential, and too strategically important to be built on outdated pattern recognition. These are markets overwhelmingly driven by women. When the people building the products aren’t aligned with the people who use them, the probability of failure skyrockets.
Founders don’t need to be coddled. They need to be evaluated by the same standards: expertise, strategy, traction, and execution.
Unless someone is a legendary founder with a proven track record, no one should be handed tens of millions of dollars without demonstrating any of the above. The era of funding confidence over competence is ending — whether investors acknowledge it or not.
Because the market is already telling a different story:
- The founders who understand users are winning.
- The founders who build real products are winning.
- The founders with traction are winning.
- The overlooked founders are being hired by the hottest companies in America.
The question now is whether venture capital wants to evolve with the market — or keep paying for its blind spots.
Because here’s the truth: When markets serve women, founders who understand women will win — with or without venture capital. And the investors who didn’t fund them will eventually have to explain why.
Author’s Note
This article builds on several years of reporting on the structural biases female founders—especially women of color—face in fundraising, product development, and category creation across beauty, wellness, and emerging technology. For deeper context on these dynamics, readers can explore my prior pieces:
To contextualize the broader funding patterns, industry failures, and gendered capital flows discussed in this article, here are additional sources worth reviewing:
These sources collectively reinforce the same conclusion:
When capital continues to flow to pattern-matched founders instead of high-performing ones, markets don’t become more efficient—they become more fragile.
