Women-led. Underestimated. Overdue: Stop Waiting for Your Seat at Their Table

SHOW ME THE MONEY? Not if you're a woman in HealthTech.

Less than 2% of VC dollars go to women-led healthcare companies—and even fewer to women’s health solutions.

I spoke with Mayra Hurtado, CEO of Prelude Health, who’s scaled her menopause testing startup internationally. 

But like so many underrepresented founders, she’s still fighting for investor attention, burning time and energy trying to explain her impact to the wrong rooms.

Here’s what most founders don’t hear enough:

It’s not your pitch—it’s the positioning.

And you don’t need to fix yourself—you need a GPS for a system that was never built for you.

This episode is your wake-up call if:

• You’re stuck in the endless pitch cycle
• You’ve got traction, but investors still don’t “get it”
• You’re overextended, doing everything, and seeing little progress

Let’s stop asking for permission and start building stages designed for us. It’s not about working harder—it’s about aligning smarter.

What You’ll Learn

• Why brilliant products and polished pitches still don’t close funding
• The hidden roadblocks women and underrepresented founders face in healthcare
• How to position your innovation in a system designed to overlook you
• What “strategic alignment” really means—and how to use it to scale faster
• The story behind the creation of the HealthTech Showdown and why it matters

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - VC Funding Gap: Building Your Own Stage

00:02:11 - Founder Story: Wake Up Call

00:05:37 - Founder Story: Pitch Misalignment

00:09:14 - Four Hidden Struggles for Underrepresented Founders

00:13:41 - Systemic Bias resulting to the Network Gap

00:14:51 - Strategy #1: Strategic Positioning for Funding and Growth

00:16:57 - Aspivix Case Study: Tailoring the Pitch to the Audience

00:19:09 - Strategy #2: Having Dialogue with Investors

00:19:43 - Strategy #3: Create a Understandab