Council Voices: Mitzi Krockover
April 1, 2025
The Physician-Entrepreneur Partnership: Strengthening Innovation in Women’s Health, M.D.
In 1995, when I led the founding of the Iris-Cantor UCLA Women’s Health Center, the concept of integrated women’s healthcare was still novel. As a physician trained in internal medicine, I saw firsthand how fragmented care led to gaps in women’s health services. Nearly three decades later, the landscape has transformed dramatically, with brilliant entrepreneurs and clinicians collaborating to bring groundbreaking innovations to market. The partnerships forming between these worlds have been fascinating to watch and participate in as both a physician and investor.
The Complementary Perspectives We Bring to the Table
Many entrepreneurs in women’s health are already driven by a compelling vision to solve problems that have been historically overlooked. You bring technical expertise, business acumen, and often personal experiences that fuel your passion for innovation in this space.
What I’ve observed in my dual roles at Golden Seeds and Springboard is how physician perspectives can complement this entrepreneurial drive. We bring insights shaped by thousands of patient interactions and clinical experiences that can help refine and strengthen innovations. The most successful collaborations I’ve witnessed are a true exchange of expertise.
In women’s health particularly, where conditions often present differently than textbook descriptions and where historical research gaps persist, this collaborative approach helps create solutions that truly address unmet needs. The strongest products emerge from environments where clinical and entrepreneurial expertise are valued equally.
Navigating the Entrepreneur-Physician Conversation
Communication between entrepreneurs and physicians can sometimes present challenges – not because either side lacks understanding, but because we often speak different languages shaped by our distinct professional experiences.
Medical training and business development create different frameworks for approaching problems. In my experience investing in women’s health companies, the most productive conversations happen when both sides bridge this gap, creating a shared vocabulary that acknowledges both clinical realities and business constraints.
When entrepreneurs pitch to physician investors at forums like Golden Seeds, the questions we ask may differ from traditional VCs. We’re often exploring how a solution fits into existing clinical workflows or evidential standards – not because we don’t believe in the innovation, but because we’re envisioning its path to successful implementation. The strongest founders welcome this perspective as valuable insight rather than simply a hurdle to overcome.
Collaboration Models That Work
Through my work with numerous women’s health startups, I’ve observed several effective models for physician-entrepreneur collaboration:
- Strategic Advisory Relationships: Regular, structured engagement with physician advisors can provide ongoing clinical insights as your product and market strategy evolve. The depth of these relationships often matters more than the number of advisors.
- Physician Investment Partnerships: Physicians who become investors in your startup often bring a unique combination of clinical expertise and alignment with your business goals.
- Founding Team Diversity: Some of the strongest women’s health startups include both business/technical founders and those with clinical backgrounds. This diversity of perspective from inception can be particularly powerful.
- Iterative Design Collaboration: Inviting physicians into your product development process – through shadowing opportunities, prototype testing, or structured feedback sessions – often reveals insights that might otherwise emerge only after market launch.
- Thought Leadership Collaboration: Partnering on educational content, white papers and journal articles can build awareness while establishing mutual credibility in the healthcare ecosystem.
Finding the Right Clinical Partners
The ecosystem of physicians interested in innovation has grown significantly in recent years. Many clinicians are actively seeking opportunities to contribute to transformative healthcare solutions beyond traditional practice.
When looking for physician collaborators, having a subject matter expert helping to advise the design and validity of the product is key. However, if your end user is the healthcare provider, those perspectives are also important. For example, a gynecologic oncologist brings different insights to a cervical cancer screening tool than a general OB/GYN, but if the product is geared toward a general practice, the general OB/GYN’s insights on adoption and workflow are key. Similarly, a solution focused on women’s heart health requires input from a cardiologist, as well as the primary care physician who may be the first-line manager of the patient’s condition.
Beyond specialty expertise, consider physicians who have demonstrated interest in innovation through activities like participation in healthcare accelerators, engagement with health system innovation centers, or involvement in digital health pilots. Organizations like Springboard Enterprises’ Women’s Health Innovation Council often serve as connection points between entrepreneurs and clinicians with complementary interests.
The most productive physician-entrepreneur partnerships share a foundation of mutual respect and intellectual curiosity. Look for clinicians who are as interested in understanding your business model as you are in understanding clinical workflows. This reciprocal learning creates the strongest foundation for meaningful collaboration.
Emerging Opportunities in Women’s Health
Both entrepreneurs and physicians are increasingly recognizing exciting opportunities in women’s health that have been historically underserved. From my perspective straddling clinical and investment worlds, several areas show particular promise:
- Life Stage Integration: Solutions that connect women’s health across reproductive health, perimenopause, and aging – recognizing the continuity of health needs in addition to a focus on isolated conditions.
- Gender-Based Data Approaches: Innovations that address the historical lack of sex-disaggregated data and develop tailored interventions based on how conditions uniquely affect women.
- Mental-Physical Health Connections: Solutions bridging the artificial divide between mental and physical healthcare – particularly important given how these dimensions interrelate in women’s health.
- Clinical Decision Support: Tools that help providers deliver better care to women by integrating emerging research and gender-specific guidelines into everyday practice.
The growing investment interest in women’s health creates a tremendous opportunity for meaningful innovation. Solutions developed through thoughtful entrepreneur-physician collaboration are particularly well-positioned to address these complex opportunities.
The Power of Collaborative Innovation
What makes me most optimistic about the future of women’s health is seeing the growing ecosystem of entrepreneurs and clinicians working together. These collaborations bring together complementary strengths – the entrepreneurial vision to reimagine possibilities and the clinical insight to ensure solutions address genuine needs effectively.
The most successful partnerships I’ve observed through my work with Golden Seeds and Springboard aren’t based on hierarchy but on mutual recognition of the value each perspective brings. Entrepreneurs help physicians think beyond existing constraints, while physicians help entrepreneurs understand the nuances of implementation in complex healthcare environments in addition to providing subject matter expertise.
The women’s health innovation landscape has never been more promising. By working together – each contributing our unique expertise and respecting what others bring to the table – we can collectively transform women’s healthcare in ways that weren’t possible when I started my career. I’m excited to continue being part of this journey and to see what we’ll accomplish together.
Mitzi Krockover, MD is Managing Director at Golden Seeds and Co-Chair of the Health Sector Committeee; host of the “Beyond the Paper Gown” podcast; and a member of Springboard Enterprises’ Women’s Health Innovation Council. She previously served as Founding Medical Director of the Iris-Cantor UCLA Women’s Health Center and Vice President of Women’s Health at Humana. As the mother of two adult daughters, she brings not only professional expertise but also a deeply personal commitment to helping to support healthcare innovations that will serve women for generations to come.
