Growing our pleasure portfolio with the investment arm of the Healthy Pleasure Group.
The pleasure gap is real and rooted in gender inequality. In fact, research has found that when women report satisfying sexual experiences, those reports usually reflect how they perceive their partner’s satisfaction – not their own. This prioritization of men’s pleasure over women’s is problematic in more ways than one. Just look at the Online College Social Life survey where 9/10 college-aged women admitted to participating in unwanted sexual activity in order to please their partners—this is unacceptable.
The Case for Her invests in female sexual health and pleasure because we know it is an integral part of the human experience and key to overall health, happiness, and economic outcomes for women and girls. We believe that taking a pleasure-based approach leads to better overall outcomes as we aim to improve the health of women and girls. SexTech is a $30 billion industry (and growing fast!), but securing funding in the space of sexual health and pleasure can still be a difficult task for early-stage startups and organizations. One of the prohibitive factors is that many VC firms today have a ‘Vice Clause’ that prevents them from investing in anything sex-related.
Today, we are pleased to announce our investment into Amboy Street Ventures, the world’s first VC fund focused on Sexual Health and Women’s Health Tech startups. Amboy Street Ventures is the investment arm of the Healthy Pleasure Group (HPG), an ecosystem dedicated to solving the problems that startups face in the Sexual Health and Women’s Health Tech space. Named after the first birth-control clinic in the US, which was actually closed after a few days as distributing contraception was illegal in 1916, Amboy Street is a much-needed resource in the underfunded space of women’s sexual health.
Amboy Street Ventures will focus on seed and Series A rounds in Europe and America. For its first major investment Amboy Street Ventures has joined the likes of Joyance Partners and Her Capital in the $4 million seed funding round of Dame Products—an exciting sexual wellness brand looking to break down the shame and stigma so often associated with women’s sexual health and pleasure. Following this, Amboy Street has also invested in Gennev, a telehealth platform designed to empower women through their menopause transition.
The sexual wellness market is predicted to hit $125 billion by 2026, so making these investments is not just important for women’s health, it’s a smart investment period. We are thrilled that our investment in Amboy Street Ventures will elevate the already incredible work done by the Dame Products and Gennev teams, and we are eager to see our partnership with Amboy Street Ventures continue to grow.
Co-Founder of The Case for Her