# From Journalist To Billion-Dollar CEO: How Kate Ryder Built The World's Largest Virtual Clinic For Women

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/inspiring-women-with-laurie-mcgraw-3258296/from-journalist-to-billion-dollar-ceo-how-kate-ryder-built-the-world-s-largest-virtual-clinic-for-women
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/inspiring-women-with-laurie-mcgraw-3258296/from-journalist-to-billion-dollar-ceo-how-kate-ryder-built-the-world-s-largest-virtual-clinic-for-women.md
Podcast: [Inspiring Women with Laurie McGraw](https://stenobird.com/podcast/inspiring-women-with-laurie-mcgraw-3258296)
Published: 2026-04-07T14:29:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/DHT4035458606.mp3
Audio file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/DHT4035458606.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/inspiring-women-with-laurie-mcgraw-3258296/episodes/from-journalist-to-billion-dollar-ceo-how-kate-ryder-built-the-world-s-largest-virtual-clinic-for-women
Duration seconds: 1656

## Resource

A venture capitalist in London watched her closest friend disappear into postpartum depression. Texts, calls, visits, the slow realization that the transition into motherhood had no real support system around it. That was the moment Kate Ryder stopped writing about problems and started building for them. Twelve years later, Maven Clinic is the largest virtual care clinic for women's and family health in the world, working with thousands of employers across hundreds of countries, and Kate is one of the rare female founders to have taken a company to unicorn status. But the path there was anything but smooth. Her Series A was the worst fundraise of her life. Male tech investors didn't understand healthcare. They didn't understand women's health. They certainly didn't understand fertility, miscarriage, or postpartum depression as a market. Kate quickly figured out she was wasting her time on anyone who needed to be educated before they could be excited. The round was eventually led by Lauren Brueggen, a woman who happened to be pregnant with her third child and instantly understood the opportunity. Today Kate is taking Maven back to its roots with a direct-to-consumer platform launching nationwide, built on a decade of clinical rigor inside the enterprise system and powered by integrations with companies like Oura that give providers a complete real-time picture of the patient. In this episode of Inspiring Women, host Laurie McGraw sits down with Kate Ryder, founder and CEO of Maven Clinic, to talk about what it actually takes to build a category-defining company in a space the industry kept calling niche. They discuss: Why Kate's first close encounter with postpartum depression became the founding insight for Maven, and how her years as a journalist trained her to spot t…

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