Sydney-based Factory Capital has committed A$25 million (approximately $18 million) to build women’s midlife health into an institutional investment category – starting not with startup investments but with clinical infrastructure. The strategy launches with the Institute Advancing Women’s Health (InAWH), a new Austin-based nonprofit focused on building treatment protocols, care pathways, and clinician training for peri- and post-menopause care, before backing five to ten commercial businesses that can scale on top of that foundation. The global market potential for women’s midlife health is estimated at $120-350 billion.
The approach is structurally unusual. Most investors in women’s health write checks into individual startups and hope the surrounding infrastructure catches up. Factory Capital is building the plumbing first – creating the treatment protocols, care pathways, and clinician training that, once in place, make the surrounding businesses easier to evaluate, fund, and scale.
“The reason capital hasn’t shown up is not that founders are absent,” the firm argues. “It is that the category is so fragmented across clinical pathways, payer architectures and consumer routes-to-market that institutional LPs struggle to underwrite a thematic fund.”
The initiative is led by partner and managing director Anna Samuelsson, whose decision to anchor the strategy came in part from her own experience navigating perimenopausal symptoms while being told she was too young for treatment. “What we’re really doing is creating a market – helping women achieve improved midlife health by building an investable category,” said Samuelsson.
Paula Schneider, who previously led the Susan G. Komen Foundation and served as CEO of American Apparel, has been named CEO of InAWH.
At A$25 million deployed across 10 or fewer companies, implied check sizes of A$2.5-5 million suggest a concentrated, hands-on approach. The firm expects to target telehealth-led menopause care, employer benefits platforms, and clinical-grade supply chains – but not pure DTC supplement brands without a clinical angle, fertility-focused businesses, or hardware-heavy diagnostics outside the menopause care workflow.
Factory Capital is not running this as a conventional LP-funded venture vehicle – the firm appears to be funding from its own balance sheet, giving the platform more strategic patience but a longer timeline to commercial traction. The initiative sits within Factory Capital’s broader HEAL platform, which focuses on early-to-mid-stage investments across health, education, and related sectors.
