Welcome to our #253 weekly newsletter.

“For women taking control of their financial future”

-Jana Hlistova

From The Purse

In this week’s newsletter, we spotlight our interview with Ida Tin on The Purse Podcast. Ida coined the term ‘femtech’ in 2016 and co-founded Clue, the most trusted female health app.

We focus on why starting Clue was important to her. And in the interview we cover Ida’s personal journey, the rise of femtech, the challenges in the women’s health market, the impact of gender in leadership, fundraising, ethical challenges in tech and much more+

Please enjoy! Listen to the full interview here.

***

And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.

I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.

Until next week,

Jana

Femtech, fundraising and future aspirations

We interviewed Ida Tin on The Purse Podcast to talk about femtech, the women’s health market, fundraising, ethical challenges in tech and why we need to design ‘a new system’.

We interviewed Ida Tin on The Purse Podcast.

Ida Tin coined the term ‘femtech’ in 2016. And she is the co-founder and former CEO and chairwoman, of Clue; the most trusted female health app. Clue has more than 10m active users in over 190 countries.

In the interview, we talk about Ida’s personal journey, why she decided to start Clue, the women’s health market, the gender health gap, fundraising, the impact of gender in leadership, ethical concerns in tech, transparency and trust in organisations, building a new system and more+

Here is a short extract from the interview

Jana: “…you're the co-founder of Clue. Can you share what led you to launch your startup and why was starting what was initially a period tracking app important to you?”

Ida’s response: (this has been lightly edited for ease of reading)

Well, I had tried to be on the pill in my twenties, and I didn't feel great. And I was sort of puzzled that nobody had come up with something else. You know, the pill is great for a lot of people, a lot of the time, but not for everybody all the time.

So I felt there needed to be more choice. And it was around 2008 and ‘quantified cell’ was a big thing: you can collect data and you can kind of optimise your body and your life and your health.

And I thought, what if my phone… (because the iPhone came out in 2008 and I didn't have one. I was pretty poor. I did not have an iPhone)…what if my phone could tell me: ‘Ida, today you cannot get pregnant’ and I would not have to worry?

And the days it told me… I could get pregnant, I could use a condom. And I thought that is really smart. And I had this idea that if you could measure hormones and saliva, it would be this really fast sort of home diagnostics and it would be data driven, completely scientific…

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that could literally change the world.

If every single woman on this planet knew exactly when she got pregnant, oh my gosh, that would be so powerful. So I really had this sense of like, oh, all the big diagnostic companies, they must be working on this. I better hurry up!

And I started trying to build this and I didn't have anything. I was not a scientist or a doctor or, you know, a lawyer or anything, but I just, ‘solving a problem’. Another part was the sense of having seen women's lives all around the planet.

I knew that having more children that you want to have. It's brutal and it's not good for the kids. It's not good for society. It's not good for anything. It's not good for the planet and for, you know, ecological systems. So I had the sense of my own need. I had a global sense. I knew that overpopulation is a thing on the planet.

So I was like, this would be a meaningful thing to work on as well. And I also thought it must be a good business case.

We need to not get pregnant for most of our lives, for most of our reproductive lives, 40 years. So, I thought, somebody must be working on this now, fast forward, I don't know, almost 15 years.

I was like, wow, they were not even trying to build this. They literally were not thinking about it!

And that blows my mind to this day. It really does. That's a long conversation. We can get into it…”

Listen to the full interview here

News in Brief

Financial news

* China doom deepens with CSI 300 drops to lowest since 2019.

* August saw the biggest equity fund outflow since 2022, according to JPM. This points to the abrupt downshifting of the retail impulse into equities.

* Oil prices tumble to their lowest level since Dec 2021 on global growth worries.

* Investors dialled back their expectations for a 50bp Fed cut next week after a somewhat hot CPI report.

* ECB's Lagarde: ECB decision on the size of the depo rate cut to 3.5% was unanimous. Says inflation will drop to 2% in course of 2025.

* Former ECB President Mario Draghi called on the EU to invest as much as €800bn extra a year to make the bloc more competitive and to commit to the regular issuance of common bonds to compete with China and the US.

* UK debt projected to almost triple over next 50 years, watchdog warns. Public finances under pressure from ageing population, climate crisis and security risks, OBR report says.

* UK economy unexpectedly flatlines for second month in row. Pre-election slowdown continues in July despite economists predicting growth of 0.2%.

Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi

* Bitcoin is now trading above $60,000. That’s a 12% rise over seven days, and a threshold unseen since last month. The price rise came as traders grew more confident that the Fed might slash interest rates by 50 basis points instead of 25.

* MicroStrategy buys an additional 18,300 bitcoin for $1.1bn, taking its holdings to 244,800 BTC.

* Etherum now stands at $2,442 after jumping nearly 11% in seven days. It had recently struggled and hit its lowest level of the year but is now climbing up again.

* There was more drama for Tether this week after Consumer protection group Consumers’ Research said in a report that the company behind the biggest stablecoin, USDT, was a “disaster for consumers waiting to happen.”

* The price of XRP, the seventh biggest digital asset, shot up following news that Grayscale had launched a new product that gave investors exposure to the Ripple-aligned asset.

* Solana applications can “prioritise real humans” with Wormhole’s latest World ID integration.

* Stablecoin issuers freeze $5m worth of stablecoins tied to Lazarus Group by ZachXBT.

Femtech, fundraising and future aspirations. Listen to the podcast interview with Ida Tin