E239: FemHealth Ventures: Sara Crown Star on Redefining Success Beyond the Family Business

Speaker 1 Today, I sit down with Sarah Crown Starr, a member of the legendary Crown family, in order to explore the values and legacy that shape her as an investor.

Speaker 1 Sarah is a venture partner at Femme Health Ventures, a top decided VC firm with $100 million in AUM, which was recently profiled in Forbes. It's a fund investing breakthrough in women's health.

Speaker 1 This conversation is about her family legacy, purpose, and the massive opportunity in women's health innovation. So, tell me about Femme Health Ventures.

Speaker 2 Femme Health Ventures is a VC fund, and we define it through a new lens called the Femme Health Framework.

Speaker 2 This is looking at conditions that affect only women, that would be reproductive health,

Speaker 2 mostly women, that might be things like migraines or autoimmune disease, or things that affect women differently.

Speaker 2 For example, when a woman has a heart attack, she might feel it in her stomach and it could be misdiagnosed as a GI issue rather than a heart attack.

Speaker 2 And the FemmeHealth framework has been largely adopted across many, many spaces at this point since we published it, but we were the first to define it this way.

Speaker 2 And we're very excited about the impact that it's already bringing forward. We invest in drugs, diagnostics, digital applications, and devices.

Speaker 1 What made you so passionate about the space and want to pursue women's health?

Speaker 2 So I've been in the space for a long time. You know, I started in law school.
I then went to the not-for-profit space. And for a while, I was looking at incontinence.

Speaker 2 The baby boomers were getting older. You know, here we can have these amazing computers in our hands, and there aren't basic incontinence products.

Speaker 2 And the baby boomers were going to be the largest population out there. So, I tried to address incontinence in a number of different ways.

Speaker 2 And the way that was most successful was I backed the founders of a company called Thinks.

Speaker 2 That's T-H-I-N-X. We created a new market for women's underwear

Speaker 2 in the stress, urinary, incontinence, and period space.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that, you know, I backed those foundries as an investor. I went on their board.
I was able to stay and work with them until sale to Kimberly Clark.

Speaker 2 And that was so much fun and so exciting to get those products out globally that I wanted to rinse and repeat and do it again.

Speaker 2 So when I had the chance to join Femme Health Ventures, I jumped on board.

Speaker 1 Help me really get a grasp around the space. Give me an example of a company that you've invested in that you're really excited about.

Speaker 2 We invested in a company called Gynasonics. In the U.S., 200,000 women annually have hysterectomy.
They do the uterine fibroids. And hysterectomy, these are super painful.
You know, they're,

Speaker 2 you know, they take a long time to recover from. You have to have a lot of drugs.
You can't get back at work the next day. You can't have children afterwards, which is the main downfall of this.

Speaker 2 And Gynasonics created an incision-free alternative to hysterectomies to treat uterine fibroids. It's called the Sonata device.

Speaker 2 And what it does is it goes in through the cervix and using RF ablation, it heats and destroys each fibroid.

Speaker 2 And it is an absolute game changer. You know, RF ablation has been used for decades in the cardiology space, but no one ever thought to apply it to women's health until this company did.
And so

Speaker 2 with this system, basically, women can go in and they have the procedure. It's incision-free, and they come out and they literally can be back at work the next day.

Speaker 2 They don't have the major pain, they don't have the major surgery, they don't have the major recovery.

Speaker 2 And of the 10,000 women who had had this procedure done when we invested, 100 had gotten pregnant. So, they're going back to get on label that you can get pregnant with this.

Speaker 2 So, again, a complete game changer for women. And they're looking into getting FDA approval, you know, to put that on the label, as I said.

Speaker 2 Gynasonics was acquired by Hellogic in January of 2025 for $350 million in an all-cash transaction. So one that we loved.

Speaker 1 And just taking a step back, when you look at the women's health space, what's the low-hanging fruit? Where's the opportunity as an investor to make the most return?

Speaker 2 Some key areas that we're looking at include menopause, fertility, cancer, pregnancy, and postpartum depression. So, one example, again, that we're super excited about is a company called Circle.

Speaker 2 It uses AI to

Speaker 2 crunch data in fertility clinics to help women looking to conceive a child through IVF, which is in vitro fertilization.

Speaker 2 Basically, they go in and they go through such a tough time, and they want to be able to have the best outcome they have they can cheryl standberg originally uh backed this ceo uh who came from the tech side this particular ceo uh sold two previous businesses including one to apple and circle um what they do is they provide a personalized percentage likelihood for patients to have success with ivf based on their specific characteristics like age these patients get a more personalized percentage as to how they would be likely to get pregnant versus a generalized percentage.

Speaker 2 And so, Circle is already in use in many IVF chains in the US, and we're very excited about this investment.

Speaker 2 And another one that I've been super excited to tell you about is something called Reunion Neuroscience. It's going after postpartum depression.

Speaker 2 Maternal mortality, unfortunately, has been on the rise over the last two decades in the US,

Speaker 2 and postpartum depression and mental health account for 20% of that.

Speaker 2 It's a huge number.

Speaker 2 And Reunion has made a novel compound similar to psoocybin. It's only available through a prescription.
So you go and you see a doctor and they send you to a clinic where there's a train monitor.

Speaker 2 They administer this compound in a four-hour session

Speaker 2 and afterwards the woman's postpartum depression is resolved. And it's remarkable.
as compared to the current options.

Speaker 2 I mean, right now, if you had this problem, there are only two things you could do. You could get SSRIs, which are antidepressants.

Speaker 2 And I think almost everyone's either gone on or knows someone who's gone on an antidepressant. They take months to get on.
They take months to get off.

Speaker 2 You don't know whether or not they're going to work. The other option is a 60-hour in-hospital infusion.

Speaker 2 If you have a baby at home, if you have responsibilities, you can't, you know, another child at home, you can't do that.

Speaker 2 And as a new mother, you don't want to do either of those if you want to breastfeed. So this is, you know, just, again, a game changer.

Speaker 2 This company, again, Reunion Neuroscience, they're going after a full FDA approval process. And in addition, the second indication they're targeting, adjustment disorder, is for cancer diagnosis.

Speaker 2 And if you think about it, there's a physiological and psychological journey that goes alongside fighting cancer. And this treatment will help with that journey.

Speaker 1 I think oftentimes women's health is undervalued for no other reason than a lot of the investors are from the men's side and don't think to double-click and look at market sizing.

Speaker 1 How would you size this market and break it down into maybe different criteria?

Speaker 2 Well, let me actually take a step back. When do you think women were allowed in clinical trials?

Speaker 1 I would guess the 60s if I had to guess.

Speaker 2 Oh, well, you go way back. No, actually, it was 1993.

Speaker 2 But if you think about that, really is rather recent.

Speaker 2 Well, I guess you thought the 60s, you thought a long time ago. They were worried about hurting the unborn fetus.
So women were not allowed in clinical trials until 1993.

Speaker 2 So as a result, there's a huge need for innovation in this category.

Speaker 2 You know, it affects half the population, right?

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 but let's look look at, say, autoimmune disease. I presume you know a lot of people that have different autoimmune diseases.
Although it mainly affects women, it affects a lot of men.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, we're looking at a broader set of categories.

Speaker 2 You know, we meet with five to eight new portfolio companies a week, and we're really excited about generating returns for our investors while we make a difference in healthcare.

Speaker 2 In terms of market size, I don't have the exact statistics I think that you're looking for, other than we're talking about half the population, half the population and more.

Speaker 2 Because when you look at the three categories, only mostly indifferently,

Speaker 2 even though we're talking about women being 50%,

Speaker 2 we actually affect many, many more conditions.

Speaker 1 So tell me about the future of women's health over the next decade. What are some early trends that are starting to materialize that you see proliferating over the next decade?

Speaker 2 My managing partner, I know, she went to the JP Morgan conference many, many years ago. She's been in the market now for 25 years.
And there was maybe

Speaker 2 one or two women's health companies at JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. I've been with her the past couple of years, and there are so many more.
And

Speaker 2 this is an area that is not only ripe for need, but people are seeing the opportunity to actually have returns in this space. And so a lot of people are jumping in.

Speaker 2 And it's really great because there is a need. I mean, if you look at ovarian cancer alone, when 57% 57% of women find out they have ovarian cancer, they're in stage four.
I mean, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 It's crazy. That shouldn't be.
I mean, we can have, again, computers that can do anything from anywhere all over the world. Something like that shouldn't happen.

Speaker 2 So a lot of people are jumping in to see what they can do to help a lot of conditions that have not been

Speaker 2 looked at

Speaker 2 for better results.

Speaker 1 Taking a step back, you grew up

Speaker 1 as a member of the Crown family, one of the most prominent families in the U.S. Tell me about what that was like and how did that shape you as an investor?

Speaker 2 Should we take a step back maybe and talk about values? Because I think that's what really comes before investing philosophy. So my father just turned 100

Speaker 2 and my sister put together this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, it was pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 My sister just put together this book where family and friends wrote notes repeating so many of the values and the principles that he had.

Speaker 2 And they're lessons that have resonated with me, which I think I've taken forward with the work that I've done.

Speaker 2 So maybe I could start off by speaking about some of those lessons with that answer question.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 So the first would be, you can't do a good deal with a bad partner.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 like right now, I think I have a great managing partner.

Speaker 2 and team at Femme Health. I just feel incredibly lucky that I'm working with such talented people that share the same values I have.

Speaker 2 I haven't always in the past. And so I really, really value that.

Speaker 2 Second would be,

Speaker 1 I think,

Speaker 2 your reputation is all you have.

Speaker 2 There's so, my grandfather is the person that started the family business, Henry Crown, and there are so many stories about him.

Speaker 2 I was looking at one, frankly, before this podcast because I had had a feeling you were going to ask something about this. So, what I pulled up was

Speaker 2 on Black Tuesday, which was October 29th, 1929, Dow lost 45 points.

Speaker 2 That was following 38 points that had been lost the day before.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 First National Bank was taking over

Speaker 1 Foreman.

Speaker 2 And he had started a materials company called Materials Service Corporation with his brothers. And

Speaker 2 all they had was a working capital loan. You know,

Speaker 2 this was a company that was building roads. You know, so you have truck, you have materials, and you have laborers, they go out and they build roads.

Speaker 2 And he needed a working capital loan to get that done. You know, he wasn't going to get paid until the roads were built, and he was going to get paid in the winter.

Speaker 2 You know, they had to get out and work in the summer and the fall. And anyway, the bank, because of Black Friday, was calling all the loans.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, he basically went to the bank and he offered every every asset he had. He offered his receivables.

Speaker 2 He offered his cash, which was really just personal insurance because he didn't have any cash. He offered the deed to his house, which was very modest.
And he offered his wedding ring.

Speaker 2 He had talked to his wife. And

Speaker 2 the bank officer looked at him and said, please, Mr. Crown, do not do this.

Speaker 1 If

Speaker 2 everyone else is going out of business and the bank will take every asset you have, Please do not do this.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 my grandfather basically said,

Speaker 2 I've hired all these people who are relying on me, and I'm going to, we are going to do it. We are going to do it.
I'm going to put everything I can into this.

Speaker 2 I gave my word to them that we would make this company work, and I'm going to give it my all.

Speaker 2 And the bank loan officer, from what I understand, basically said or thought to himself, you know, a man who offers everything

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 someone you have to give a second look to. And they gave him a chance and he made it, you know, and so he must have had good partners and,

Speaker 2 you know, and

Speaker 2 his reputation was important to him. He gave his word to all these people that, you know, were relying on him and he came through.

Speaker 2 That goes on to, you know, as you go on through the generations, the first, the second, I'm the third generation.

Speaker 2 Another basic value is always to remember the importance of taking care of community.

Speaker 2 So he was taking care of his employees then, but then once you do well enough, you have to go beyond to take care of your community.

Speaker 2 I can go into it. There's so many stories if you want.

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Speaker 2 I can go on some stories about my dad.

Speaker 2 You want me to do that?

Speaker 1 I've talked to a few kind of both

Speaker 1 professionals in the space, and one of the things that comes up is basically this sense of community and sense of purpose seems to lead to financial returns and successes of a family.

Speaker 1 Can you explain how those are related? It seems to be a very common theme.

Speaker 2 It's very common. And I'd say it's ingrained in you.

Speaker 2 It's ingrained in my family anyway. And it's ingrained, I think, in a lot of the people that I'm lucky enough to work with in the Chicagoland community and beyond.

Speaker 2 There are, I mean, I'm so proud to say there are so many stories. You know, as I got ready for this podcast, I had to, you know,

Speaker 2 decide which one to tell. It's like going into a chocolate store, you know,

Speaker 2 there's no bad choice. They're all wonderful.
And it's really hard to choose. But I picked out a couple that I thought I thought you or your listeners might want to hear.
So one is

Speaker 2 there's a there's a hospital in Chicago called Cook County Hospital where anybody can go.

Speaker 2 A woman by the name of Ruth Rustin, who is in in charge of the Cook County Bureau of Health, went to my father

Speaker 2 when the Cook County Hospital had lost its national accreditation in 1990.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 she asked my father if he would, you know, help. And he had heard there are plenty of beds in the city and

Speaker 2 didn't really see this as a priority at first, just based on what he had heard from other people. But she said, please come, please come and tour the hospital.

Speaker 2 And so he went, you know, he spent four hours or whatever it was to tour the hospital.

Speaker 2 And he told me just the other day at 100 years old, he remembers these stories, that it looked like a Civil War hospital, that women were literally giving birth, you know, in lines on cots in the hall.

Speaker 2 And he was mortified when he saw this.

Speaker 2 Ruth Rothstein said she saw this lack of access, you know, to decent health care as a real social justice issue.

Speaker 2 And so my father worked with the civic committee to figure out out a way to make it financially viable for the city to rebuild this hospital to offer modern day services and space to portion of the city that needed access to affordable and quality health care.

Speaker 2 You know, this wasn't something you could just do philanthropically. You had to do it with public dollars.
And he worked.

Speaker 2 to make that possible and to get the one thing he did is he went to the press to get the press to be able to really understand what was going on and then to get the press to publish enough articles to get the people that needed to move the way they needed to move to make this happen.

Speaker 2 And then,

Speaker 2 um, another story I picked out just around this is

Speaker 2 that there's something called the Henry Crown Fellows Program at the Aspen Institute. This is one of my absolute favorite things that I have the opportunity to watch or participate in.

Speaker 2 And what this is, is

Speaker 2 basically a program was set up in 1990, which took people who were already successful, and it gave them a road to go from success to significance.

Speaker 2 As an example, Reed Hastings was in the second class, you know, the founder of

Speaker 1 Netflix.

Speaker 2 Netflix, right, yeah. We all know the fish story, right? Where, you know, rather than giving someone a fish, you know, it's way better to teach them how to fish, right?

Speaker 2 So, what this did is it took all of these, it's taken since 1990, all of these incredible leaders

Speaker 2 who have figured out how to build whatever their business is. And it's a bouquet.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you actually look at the Henry Crown Fellows website for the Aspen Institute, the variety of leaders that are in there just is 360. It's all over in terms of what people have done.

Speaker 2 And it's given them a way to

Speaker 2 work together, to bond together, to have support. to figure out what community is important to them and how are they really going to have impact in that community.

Speaker 2 And then to have a peer group as well as mentoring to figure out how to move the needle to get something really significant done.

Speaker 2 And, you know, just today, just this year, to this summer, you know, I always get to go to meet the group, which is one of my favorite things to do.

Speaker 2 I actually, for many years, went with my brother Jim. who has recently passed away and very bittersweet for me to go back there because he's not there.

Speaker 2 Lucky enough to to be there with my brother Steve this year, who actually was terrific speaking instead of my father to these, to the latest group.

Speaker 2 But, you know, in the latest group, Kesha was there, you know, artist, entrepreneur. I actually didn't get a chance to meet Kesha because it's random.

Speaker 2 You walk in and I was talking to all these other people who were just so fascinating and able.

Speaker 2 And, you know,

Speaker 2 I just sit there smiling as I watch this group of people that have accomplished so much want to be able to give back to their own communities. And this is a way that helps me do it.

Speaker 1 I've been developing this thesis around the sixth gear that people seem to have embedded in them around purpose and meaning that very rarely gets activated, that really makes people that much better.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people in the finance world, they look at this almost as naive. Oh, you're trying to change the world.
You're trying to do these things.

Speaker 1 I think what they fail to grasp is that there's a sixth gear of hyper productivity, hyper focus that gets unlocked when you're focused on something that has meaning for you and meaning for others.

Speaker 1 Just to give some examples, Elon Musk, anything that he goes after, it has to be, to quote David Sandra, epoch making. So it has to be, we're going to Mars, we're transforming electric industry.

Speaker 1 He's never going to go after something that's purely a business goal. Jeff Bezos's just extreme obsession over his customer has, you could see it in his annual letters going back to the mid-90s.

Speaker 1 Blake Schull, who came on this podcast talking about supersonic jet travel and making travel easier for people.

Speaker 1 I think it's one of those things where these missions for missions, I think is the right word for it, just galvanizes people and unlocks the sixth gear in everybody that I think is highly underrated and you just don't see in a spreadsheet.

Speaker 1 I think that's the number one thing that financial investors miss, especially in the venture ecosystem, is the person's persistence to make change, not to make a billion dollars, to make tens of billions of dollars.

Speaker 1 It's also important, but just that change and that tick to have their imprint on the world, I think is highly undervalued.

Speaker 2 I love the saying necessity is the mother of invention.

Speaker 2 I think the best entrepreneurs out there are the ones that, you know, they're doing something because it may have been because of childhood trauma.

Speaker 2 You know, it was because of something that was missing. It was because of something that was sorely needed.
And, you know, they're going to make it happen.

Speaker 2 And to me,

Speaker 2 that's the most passionate of the entrepreneurs. And as an investor, you know, when you can find an entrepreneur that has got that much grit and that much passion, you know,

Speaker 2 you're betting on the team. You're betting on what they can build.
You're betting on the desire that they have to really figure this out so that this could get solved. I could not agree with you more.

Speaker 1 So a lot of positives, obviously, from coming from your background, being raised in such a prominent family, what are some of the downsides and the dark sides of kind of having this status in society?

Speaker 2 To whom much is given, much is expected. So, you know, we were expected to attend a lot of things.

Speaker 2 But I didn't see that as a downside. You know, my parents really, they really tried to raise us just with a regular upbringing.

Speaker 2 i mean i i was oblivious i mean here i am in this big house you know there are people lowing the mowing the lawn for us but um

Speaker 2 i didn't think about it i mean we had a family station wagon we all had dinner at the same time every night we we were thrown in the backyard uh instead of things you know run around town you know after school we had you know we're expected to get good grades i think that's how i was referred to you uh the run diamond and um

Speaker 2 it's interesting. I'm listening to people who are first and second generation wealth generators.
And I think decisions that they make trading off

Speaker 2 taxes for power

Speaker 2 can have an effect on family.

Speaker 2 You know, if you want to save taxes, you have to take power away from future generations because you can't be the you know, you can't control something if you don't want to pay the tax. So that

Speaker 2 can create issues.

Speaker 1 Double-click on that. So, why is there this friction between taxes and power?

Speaker 2 So, say if you're the wealth generator, right, and you're trying to save money and downstream it to other family members, if you put it in trust and you put it what we call over the wall, so there won't be a state tax when you die,

Speaker 2 whoever you give it to, the beneficiary, can have the money, but it's in trust and it's controlled by a trustee it's not controlled by the the future family member and so that can create issues you know people are lucky enough to have access to those assets but they don't have control over them and that can create issues and i think being really thoughtful about that is super important and that's why ron and so many other people are really, I know you just interviewed, gosh, you interviewed Christina at Harvard, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, so many people are focused now on really being thoughtful about what you're going to do in this situation. You know, people have different ideas about downstreaming wealth.

Speaker 2 Warden Buffett's giving it all away, right? You know, other people downstream it. And there's no right, there's no wrong.
Like some people like to be completely anonymous.

Speaker 2 Some people want to be a leader out in the field. I mean, there's, you know, there's no right or wrong, but

Speaker 2 your choices can have different consequences.

Speaker 1 What advice would you give the next generation of Crown family members when it comes to finding their own mission and finding their own voice?

Speaker 2 I would say

Speaker 2 raise your kids like it can all blow away tomorrow. This happened in Nazi Germany.
It can happen again. I mean, we're all watching anti-Semitism on the rise everywhere.

Speaker 2 I think to build self-esteem, kids need their own goals and to work hard to reach them. And we've taught our kids to be independent thinkers, and I think that's critical.

Speaker 2 I also would tell them how you treat other people says everything.

Speaker 2 I think it's one of the strongest lessons I learned at Kellogg.

Speaker 2 Every person in this world adds value to you, and you need to recognize that value. I ran a capital campaign in 2015 for the JUF and it was a team of 50 and I think the

Speaker 2 most important thing was for me to try to motivate each of the 50 members on the team so that they could do the best job possible to achieve the goal, which we did. My goal, by the way, was

Speaker 2 I wanted to raise more money than anyone previously had because I was a woman and I was only the fourth woman asked to do this. So raise your kids like a blow away for tomorrow.

Speaker 2 How you treat people says everything. I think building genuine friendships is critical,

Speaker 2 not just networking connections. It's really important that you have lasting relationships.

Speaker 2 You know, your friends are the people you can count on when things go wrong. And everyone has many things that go wrong throughout the course of their life.
No one gets away without these hurdles.

Speaker 2 It's a part of us. And

Speaker 2 you need real friends to make it through those.

Speaker 2 I would talk about financial responsibility. I think a downside of our parents shielding us from knowing about wealth was not learning fiscal, basic fiscal responsibility.

Speaker 2 If you hide money from kids, they can't learn how to read an income statement or a balance sheet, or frankly, they may not think about how to earn more.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, I'd recommend that everyone read James Hughes' Family Wealth. I think he's the guru when it comes to families.
And

Speaker 2 he has this saying in the book that if you, you know, if you're first generation, you start in the rice patties, second generation, you build, get out of the rice patties, third generation spends it all, and then fourth generation ends up back in the rice patties.

Speaker 2 You know, you want to warn your next generation, you don't want to end up back in the rice patties. So it's really important that you

Speaker 2 think about how to preserve and grow well.

Speaker 1 Oh, thanks so much for jumping on the podcast, for sharing sharing so much wisdom, and look forward to sitting down soon.

Speaker 2 Thanks so much for having me.

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