Q & A with Leslie Busick, co-founder and CEO of Le Minou

Rising awareness and acceptance of women's health issues have driven the growth of opportunities in the femtech space. While solutions for dysfunction in men have been around for 20+ years such as Viagra, the industry has been underinvested in until recently. The company was founded on the premise of Leslie Busicks's, the Co-founder and CEO of Le Minou, own experiences.

Leslie Busick, CEO and co-founder of Le Minou

Progression: What made you want to start Le Minou?
Leslie Busick: I struggled with a lot of my own women’s health / sexual health related issues - hormonal imbalances, low libido, etc. So I went to my gynecologist who basically told me "Oh it’s no big deal, it's just part of being a woman. Just deal with it." It was a pretty disheartening response. But I started talking to some friends and I realized there’s stories like this everywhere that aren’t being addressed and it’s across a woman’s life - from her 20s to postpartum sexual health to menopause sexual health and beyond. It seemed crazy to me that our only resource as women is your traditional, old fashioned gynecologist and / or to “just deal with it”. That had to be fixed - there had to be another, better, and empowering way. So I left my finance job to build a company to address these needs and to reimagine all of women’s health at scale, starting with sexual health.

Progression: Why do you think now there has been so much interest in femtech?
Leslie Busick: It was only a matter of time! I feel like we’ve seen this before in many transformational spaces - the ride share economy, the mental health space, cryptocurrency, etc - it takes a while for people to understand and to catch on. Last summer when we were raising our pre-seed, I remember I had to do a lot more educating around these issues, rather than pitching. The VCs would say things like “let me talk to my wife about it” or “this sounds like a ‘nice to have’ not a ‘need to have’ “. This summer was totally different - the problem totally resonated and I could focus more on the pitch. I think this is an example why diversity is so important. It’s crazy to think ~50% of the population is female and yet only ~5% of investors are female. It’s been great to have more awesome women around the table in some of these conversations.

Progression: What have been some challenges for you as you build your business?
Leslie Busick: I think the headwinds we faced are now becoming tailwinds. Just like I said earlier, it was tough to get people to understand the problems earlier on - that women’s health lacks resources, innovation and funding. But now people have realized this is a massive space and a huge opportunity ripe for disruption. It’s a lot like the mental health space not too long ago.

It’s funny people ask if COVID was a challenge but I actually think COVID actually was a great time to start this. It really brought people together. We started by building a community first to really understand our customer and her pain points. We hosted weekly “Sexual Wellness Wednesday” events via Zoom where we’d bring in different experts like sex therapists or gynecologists and talk about everything from “Sex During Menopause” to “Body Positivity”. We obviously had no marketing dollars at the time and yet we’d have hundreds of women from all over not only tune in, but share their own, highly intimate stories. And that’s when we realized we were on to something.

Progression: What excites you most about the problems you're solving/product you're building?
Leslie Busick: So many things excite me about what we’re doing. One of the best parts of my job is interacting with our customers and seeing the impact we are having on each one of them personally. And then knowing that impact is scaling to thousands of other women everywhere - that’s the beauty of technology. It’s crazy to know we can help so many women who haven’t had access to a doctor like Dr. Suzanne or to high quality healthcare that’s personalized, accessible, affordable, and effective.

I’m also excited because I see a world in the not so distant future where Le Minou is not only B2C, but a successful, employer-led digital health company.

And finally, I’m super excited about our care delivery model that we believe is scalable to so many other aspects of women’s health, or even general healthcare at large - women’s sexual health is really just the beginning for us.

Progression: Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
Leslie Busick: Never give up or make excuses - just act and keep pushing through.