Blossom Capital’s Louise Samet talks hormone tracking and femtech bets

Early stage European VC firm, Blossom Capital, is fresh from closing a $185M fund- a big jump up on its prior close. The firm makes just a handful of investments per year, mostly at the Series A stage, working very closely with founders in its portfolio - a strategy it refers to as "high conviction" investing.

One of its chosen few is Inne, a Berlin-based femtech startup that's building a novel, hormone-tracking subscription product, for fertility-tracking and 'natural' contraception. The aim is to offer a high-tech alternative to taking hormones to prevent pregnancy or using an established barrier method, such as a condom.

Inne came out of stealth last fall to announce $8.8M in funding - giving the first glimpse of the medical device it's been working on since 2017. This test-at-home hormone tracker is slated to launch in select markets in Scandinavia this year. But at a small scale, akin to a limited beta - with the startup saying it would be iterating the product based on feedback from the first users

We chatted to Blossom Capital partner, Louise Samet, who led the fund's investment in Inne, to get the inside track on that deal and, more broadly, understand how the fund thinks about femtech, as well as to ask her about the key challenges and opportunities she sees for founders building products targeted at women.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TechCrunch: How does the fund approach femtech?

Samet: The way we define femtech is products that are built for women. But I think the definition of the term is not necessarily important. The more important thing is the problem the founders are focusing on solving.