More than half of women will experience vaginal dryness during or after menopause, and roughly seven in ten of them will never mention it to their doctor. That gap represents both an injustice and an opportunity. Vaginal dryness isn’t a niche symptom for a niche few; it’s a mainstream, majority experience.
Selling my first company bought me the freedom to chase a problem that mattered. The more I looked into women’s health, the more one thing stood out: all the innovation went into fertility and pregnancy, and then it seemed to stop.
Perimenopause and symptoms like vaginal dryness are some of the biggest underserved opportunities in women’s health today. And millennials are walking into it now, a generation that has challenged expectations and demanded better at every stage of life. I couldn’t see why menopause would be the exception. This isn’t a fringe issue waiting for permission; it’s a mainstream experience on the cusp of real cultural change.
In Maryalice Rosa, I found a co-founder who shared the same passion for women’s health, and together we founded Biolae in February 2024.
The gap we saw was clear: clinically validated, non-hormonal solutions for perimenopause. In conversations with practitioners, the same problem kept surfacing. When a woman sat down across from her GP, there was rarely anything solid to recommend, not for lack of will, but because the science behind most of what lined the shelves simply wasn’t there.
So we made clinical validity non-negotiable. Setting a new standard, for us, means ingredients backed by gold-standard clinical trials, dosed at therapeutic levels, and every batch independently tested for purity and potency. We built a Scientific Advisory Board to set those evidence standards, and got to work.
Having built consumer brands before, I understood that women don’t just connect with products; they connect with brands that understand them. Healthcare has traditionally prioritised efficacy while treating design, experience and community as afterthoughts. I really wanted to prove that those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
Biolae is about to launch Australia’s first TGA-listed hyaluronic acid pessary, three years in the making and the biggest milestone in our history so far. I really feel the weight of that. Launching a first-to-market medical device right, in a category this personal, comes with real responsibility, and I don’t take it lightly.
Vaginal dryness gets filed under menopause, but that’s only part of the story. It shows up postpartum, in stressful seasons, on certain medications. This isn’t a menopause symptom; it’s a women’s health one. And that’s exactly the education gap worth closing: pulling vaginal dryness out from under the menopause umbrella and naming all the women who quietly live with it.
Menopause is a far easier conversation to have publicly than it was even a few years ago. But that shift hasn’t reached the most common, and most taboo, symptom of all. Vaginal dryness is still sitting exactly where it always has: unspoken. That gap, between how common it is and how little anyone talks about it, is where we think the real impact sits.
Building in underserved spaces is what excites me most. There’s no existing playbook. It’s rare for a startup to launch a first-to-market medical device in consumer health at all, let alone one addressing a symptom this overlooked, and that’s precisely what makes it a real opportunity to do something different.
Coming from outside healthcare has been, unexpectedly, our sharpest advantage. I don’t market like a traditional health company because I never really learned to. To launch, we’re running a campaign called Not-So-Dry July, a campaign designed to educate women about vaginal dryness whilst making the conversation feel less intimidating. I think humour, when used thoughtfully, has an incredible ability to break down stigma. It helps people lean into conversations they might otherwise avoid. It’s a delicate balance, but one I’ve thought deeply about getting right.
Our next big frontier is the pharmacy. The menopause shelf has traditionally lived on the bottom row, literally the lowest, most out-of-sight real estate in the store, which tells you everything about how the category has been valued to date. So for us, entering pharmacy isn’t just about earning shelf space; it’s about reshaping how retailers think about menopause and the role these products play in women’s lives.
Looking back, the last three years have been anything but linear. Like every startup, there have been setbacks, pivots and moments of uncertainty. It truly still feels like we are just at the start line, in the best way possible. Women’s health is finally receiving the attention it deserves, yet there are still so many unmet needs waiting to be solved, and that really excites me.