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The Nexus Women’s Health Collective is a 9 month accelerator program for pre-seed / seed women’s health companies, in partnership with Barclays

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So proud to be part of The Nexus Women’s Health Collective, which has kicked off a 9-month program for a cohort of very impressive entrepreneurs!

Took a selfie with my esteemed fellow judges on the startup showcase, finding a winner among so many winning ventures was not an easy task. Congratulations to all startups 🥳

And I was so proud to learn that many readers and fans of TVB were in the audience 🙏

#thevaginabusiness

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Last week I was asked to speak to the next wave of women’s health founders.

And not once did I mention:
→ vegetables, exercise, sleep, or meditation.

Sure, I could talk about those things all day. And they are important. I love them.

But when you’re building a startup and trying to maintain **what’s left of** your mental health, the last thing you need is another wellness expert telling you to eat more veg 🫠

So the six rules I shared to kick off the @nexusconnected Women’s Health Collective nine-month accelerator at @barclaysuk Innovation Hub:

→ Your worth ≠ your wins
→ Reactivity is the enemy
→ Health is the only currency that compounds
→ Your circle shapes your ceiling
→ Know the game. Play it well.
→ Back yourself before you’re ready

I wanted to focus on the psychological load of building something from nothing.
The identity crisis when things don’t work.
The spotlight syndrome we all experience.

I wanted to give the room something they would remember.

And the feedback?

“The tone of the day was set by the amazing Bianca Errigo, who was open and honest about the challenges of being a startup founder.”

“An incredible talk from Bianca Errigo”

“Thank you Bianca! I ❤️ your talk at the women’s founders day - feel seen. Thank u for sharing your journey.”

“Hi Bianca loved your presentation today and love your platform.”

“Still vibing on your presentation this morning! So good”

“Your energy was an inspiration. Appreciated your openness on your journey and responding to questions thoughtfully.”

“Thank you for all the jokes this morning at the Nexus event! And for the whole talk, really. Not easy for founders to admit they are not superhuman, still finding a way to transmit that message myself :-)”

A huge well done to the incredible cohort of founders who have made the course and for your exceptional showcases 🚀

And to @leotysonn2 for masterminding this whole programme.

So what did I miss? What’s a rule you live by that keeps you grounded?

Bx🐝

#WomensHealth #FounderLife #MentalHealth #StartupLife #SustainableHighPerformance

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Some very exciting news for BioAgeOS.

We’ve been accepted into the The Nexus Women’s Health Collective, supported by Barclays Eagle Labs.

We’re only four months old, so getting in at this stage means a great deal. To be chosen as one of just 40 startups from across the country, this early in our journey, is something the whole team is genuinely proud of.

Over the next nine months we’ll be building alongside the founders, clinicians, experts, mentors and investors shaping the future of women’s health. For us this is exactly the kind of room we hoped to grow into: thoughtful, ambitious, and rooted in the belief that women’s health deserves better evidence, better tools and better support.

That belief is the reason BioAgeOS exists. We’re building a calibration layer that corrects the population and life-stage blind spots in epigenetic clocks, starting with the female biology these models have largely overlooked.

A huge thank you to Leo Tyson, Nexus and Barclays Eagle Labs for the opportunity and for backing what we’re building.

Onwards, with a lot of energy and a very full notebook.

#biologicalage #healthandwellness #longevity #preventivemedicine

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We are excited to share that @icook.health has officially joined @nexusconnected Women's Health Collective supported by @eaglelabs.

The programme brings together women’s health founders building innovative solutions across consumer, B2B, and product focused businesses.

On Thursday 9 July, our CEO & Founder Dr Maria Kardakova (@drkardakova) will also be attending the Nexus Collective Kick Off Day 2 at the Barclays Innovation Hub in London.

We are proud to continue growing iCook alongside a community focused on evidence based innovation in health and wellbeing 💚

#WomenInTech #HealthTech #StartupEcosystem

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last week filled with work, life, lots of events and a whole lot of laughter & @redbull 🤪

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Thousands of women relate. That’s why we’re building the tools that empower and support clinicians to prescribe hormones on an individualized level!

🎙️Our very own @elenaruedacarrasco, Co-Founder & CEO of Dama Health speaks on the following in The Women’s Wellness Show hosted by @leotysonn2:

🧪 The origin story — A PubMed-powered spreadsheet she used to advise housemates was v1 of Dama Health, six years before it became a business.

🧪 Business plans in women’s health — In a space where commercialisation is harder and investor scrutiny is higher, Elena makes the case for putting numbers on paper early. Numbers can defend you in the room in a way words can’t.

🧪Going to market in the US — Their Yale-based CMO was the anchor. The NHS’s post-COVID constraints made the decision easy.

🧪 The EMMA Consortium — Dama joined two other companies to apply for a $3M US grant to build a shared precision medicine platform for endometriosis. Elena explains why collaboration is rare, how grant funding unlocks it, and how they’ve structured IP so the platform survives even if one company doesn’t.

Find “The Women’s Wellness Show” on your favorite podcast hub or the link on our stories!

#podcast #newepisode #womenshealth #hormones doctor

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It always starts with the founders…

Because at the earliest stage, it’s never really about the market opportunity, the product or the deck. It’s about the person. Their talent. Their nerve. Their refusal to accept that it can’t be done.

Exceptional founders are a rare thing. When you find one, you have to back them!

🎙️ In conversation with @leotysonn2 founder of @nexusconnected and host of @thewomenswellnessshow

Full episode link in bio.

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66km over London to draw a @strav.art Vul*v*

And a marathon with a period pain simulator (for 16km of it)

Both events done 2 weeks apart for @theendometriosisfoundation and @censhershipcampaignofficial

I messed the route up at the north West Point and south east meaning this doesn’t look as much like a Vu*lv* as it should but hopefully it’s still noticeable enough that with the scale over London it will get some people to stop scrolling and read this

Tech platforms are censoring women’s health anatomy and language

As well as banning ads about perfectly normal women’s health experiences or conditions

The opposite isn’t true for men

If I even use the word vulv* I get a notification asking if I’m sure I want to post this

@talkswithdrsesay is one of the many doctors talking about the very real consequences this on women’s relationships with their body’s and subsequently how lo no they delay seeking care

I ran the marathon with a period pain simulator on to raise awareness for how much harder women with endometriosis or even ‘regular’ period pains have it in terms of planning life around their cycles and the impacts of pain

I couldn’t keep the cramp simulator on for longer than 16kms and ran the whole marathon in the same time it took me to run a marathon inside yesterdays ultra marathon

Which tells you everything you need to know about how much harder it was

Thank you @carlacressy , @itscliowood , Anna O’Sullivan for your support in doing these 2 events for you

Thank you @drzahra.blogs for joining me on my silly idea to run 66km, I didn’t believe you when you offered 🤣 but I’m very glad we got to do that together

Thank you everyone who joined us for the last 5k yesterday!

And @elliotmeeten for picking me up 55k when I really needed it to get to the meet point for the last 5k on time

And @deirdre.o.neill @hertility for the merch! Hertility are amazing advocates of the censorship campaign

The donation link is in my bio and will also be on my stories so if you can please feel free to donate to these 2 great causes - @theendometriosisfoundation and @censhershipcampaignofficial

I’ll match all donations 💜🫶

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“We know more about coffee, wine and tomatoes than we do about breast milk”

@drsionedjones co-founder @boobybiome episode now live on The Women’s Wellness Show - closing out season 2 by saving the best for last!

Dr Sioned was the recipient of the 2023 Potts medal for outstanding science

Boobybiome has 6 successful innovate UK grants! Raising over £2 million just from these

We speak about:

The education and awareness gap in both women’s and maternal health. Until the early 2000s it was thought that breast milk was sterile

How the team couldn’t culture bacteria from the breast milk samples, they couldn’t figure out why until they realized a baby’s latch creates a vacuum. Breast milk isn’t exposed to oxygen during feeding! The bacteria is anaerobic and this discovery led to their 2nd product creation

Building the company whilst defining a sector

“The deep tech investors didn’t like the consumer angle. The consumer VCs didn’t like the deep tech. The women’s health VCs said you aren’t quite Femtech either “

The Boobybiome team raised £3.25 million from the investors who did get it

Full episode via the link in my bio on Apple and Spotify!

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Should we be studying the v*ginal microbiome?

Dr Chrysi the founder of @xxinnovation came on The Women’s Wellness Show to talk about the $1 Trillion missed opportunity on studying and connecting the women’s health ecosystem

Full podcast episode via the link in my bio @leotysonn2

We also covered:

Fragmentation across the full pathway, from regulation and NHS access through to investment incentives and patient involvement, and why each breakdown point needs its own solution.

Regulation is not the enemy. Why the fear of the regulatory process is a perception problem, not a reality, and why it is never too early for founders to engage with the MHRA.

Misaligned investment incentives. Why the lack of a clear return pathway pushes companies toward wellness when the real need is diagnostics and therapeutics.

The knowledge gap. How little we still understand about female physiology, and why that blocks meaningful progress across the whole system.

Advice for founders. Decide who you are, engage the regulator early, think about your clinical validation, and always centre the patient.

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Thank you so much to @leotysonn2 @nexusconnected for organising this event on censorship and bias towards women's health and femtech last night at @barclaysuk Moorgate.
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Despite tube strikes, it was standing room only for our co-founder @itscliowood keynote talk on Why Can't We Talk About Women's Health, then a panel with other excellent women, tagged below and some really insightful and useful workshops to finish.
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The workshops are a great way to mix up the format and ensure that you get proper 1-2-1 question time with a host/expert, so I love that Leo runs these events.
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It's awesome to be hosting such an interested group on this important topic, a year or two ago that just wouldn't have been possible. Women's Health is not niche. When CensHERship succeeds, we all win.
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#femtech #femtick #womenshealth #femalefounders #womensvoices

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Why aren’t we testing the vaginal microbiome and building diagnostics specifically for women?

New episode of The Women’s Wellness show is now live with Marta Ciechonska! Link in my bio

Salient Bio started with 3 microbiome wellness products:
-Vaginal
-Oral
-Gut testing

Microbiome data is powerful enough to detect signatures of disease, so they’re using it to build non-invasive diagnostics.

Their criteria?

-The condition must have a microbial component
-Be difficult or frustrating to diagnose
-And most importantly, disproportionately affect women!

Because too many diagnostics simply weren’t built with women in mind.

That’s exactly what Salient Bio are here to change!

We covered:

From COVID testing to microbiome diagnostics:
Marta Ciechonska shares how Salience Bioscience pivoted from building a high-throughput COVID testing platform to microbiome wellness testing, and ultimately to developing non-invasive diagnostic tests using microbiome data.

Building diagnostics specifically for women.
The team didn’t set out as a women’s health company, but discovered through their research how severely underserved women are in diagnostics, from skewed reference ranges to conditions that simply have no test yet.

And much more!

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