“Women’s health is the single most important challenge that we have within our generation, within our lifetime. I don’t think that it’s AI or space exploration or flying cars.” – Valentina Milanova
Valentina Milanova, Founder and CEO of Daye, a London-based gynaecological health research and development company, is pioneering innovative solutions such as pain-relieving and STI testing tampons. Originally from Bulgaria, she moved to the UK at 19 and founded the company at just 22 while working within venture capital.
In the latest PharmaSource podcast episode, Valentina explains how she established her own manufacturing operations to challenge industry monopolies, built a resilient company culture, and navigated complex women’s health innovation amid significant systemic barriers.
Breaking Manufacturing Monopolies to Drive Innovation
The tampon industry represents one of the most concentrated manufacturing monopolies in healthcare, with innovation stagnating for decades. Valentina’s solution was radical: build her own manufacturing capabilities from the ground up.
“What’s really interesting about the tampon industry is that it’s one of the last greatly monopolised industries out there. There’s one company globally which makes all of the tampon manufacturing lines, and there’s another monopoly which buys the tampon manufacturing lines and then white label manufacturers for every brand,” Valentina explains.
This manufacturing concentration explained why there had been virtually no product innovation in tampons for generations. To create Daye’s innovative products, Valentina had to design custom machines, establish production facilities, and secure medical device certifications—all without prior engineering experience.
“Most of the design engineering community in the UK and the US is quite male dominated. To begin with, it was very hard for me to find design engineers and mechanical engineers who even wanted to work on a tampon machine. Years after we made some of our first hires, I learned that they were ashamed to tell their friends and family that they were working on a tampon machine, because they didn’t think that was cool enough.”
Manufacturing Through Crisis: COVID-19 Challenges
Just as Daye launched in March 2020, COVID-19 hit the company particularly hard. With six team members contracting the virus early in the pandemic and disengaging to handle personal crises, Valentina found herself single-handedly running manufacturing operations while preparing for a critical funding round.
“I was pretty much left on my own to run our manufacturing, to run the actual machines, to pick and pack boxes, to fold boxes. We had about 1,000 monthly customers, so I had to make about 15,000 tampons per month,” Valentina recounts.
The situation deteriorated when her landlord shut off building access due to other tenants not paying rent, forcing Valentina to break into the facility to set up power generators and maintain operations.
“It was probably the hardest time of my life. I just moved into the factory so I could fundraise, support the team, run the machines, run manufacturing. My fingers were literally bleeding. I called two of my childhood friends in Bulgaria, and they came to London, and we started working together, literally living together in the factory, in order to keep the business going.”
Despite these extraordinary challenges, Daye experienced exponential growth, eventually establishing its first industrial-scale factory in Bulgaria—a decision partly influenced by Brexit’s impact on European supply chains.
The Gender Health Gap: A Systemic Challenge
Valentina’s journey highlights the pervasive gender health gap that exists across funding, research, and healthcare delivery. The statistics she shares are stark:
“In the UK, we spend about 2.4% of our public health funding budget for the entirety of women’s health. That 2.4% has to stretch to cover breast cancer, to cover endometriosis, to cover ovarian cancer, to cover menopause, perimenopause, fertility, etc. And the situation in private funding is the same. Less than 1% of venture capital globally gets allocated to the entirety of women’s health. And within women’s health, there’s a gender gap. 70% of the venture capital funding that has gone towards Women’s Health Solutions has gone to male founders.”
The consequences of this funding disparity are profound, affecting everything from disease diagnosis to treatment options:
“Women get diagnosed later than men in over 700 diseases. In cancer, we have a 4.5 year diagnostic delay. And in diabetes, it’s three and a half year delay. Similarly, with cardiovascular disease, medical practitioners are trained to recognise the symptoms of a heart attack that show up in the male physiology, but not those that show up in the female physiology.”
Building a Culture of Trust and Feedback
Despite operating as a remote-first company with offices across multiple countries, Valentina attributes much of Daye’s success to its distinctive culture built on trust, vulnerability, and regular feedback.
“What makes our culture successful currently is that we have people who genuinely care about closing the gender health gap, and who also genuinely care about one another. We have this team intimacy, where people can be vulnerable in front of each other, and also there’s really low levels of ego at Daye.”
A cornerstone of this culture is normalising regular feedback rather than relegating it to dreaded annual reviews:
“If we normalise feedback instead, if it happens on a very regular basis, on a weekly basis, people start to really internalise that you care about them personally and professionally. As a result, we don’t have things that are unspoken. We don’t have these political bubbles that just keep growing and growing until they burst.”
Navigating Venture Capital as a Women’s Health Company
For entrepreneurs in women’s health seeking funding, Valentina offers candid advice about the realities of venture capital, particularly the misalignment of incentives between founders and investors:
“Go with your eyes wide open. Your investors are not your business partners, and they’re not your friends. They’re the providers of capital,” she warns. “The core reason for why incentives are misaligned is because there’s an asymmetry of risk. As an entrepreneur, you have one company. A venture capital investor will have 100 or more companies in their portfolio.”
This fundamental asymmetry leads VCs to push for rapid growth and risk-taking that may not always align with thoughtful strategy:
“Venture capital investors push you to take a lot of risks, and they push you to move at a very fast pace, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for thoughtful decision making, thoughtful strategy, road mapping, etc.”
Advocacy in an Uncertain Political Climate
Despite concerning trends in women’s health funding and policy, Valentina remains committed to engaging with decision-makers across the political spectrum.
“There’s no Coalition of the Willing in women’s health that is going out to fight the fight,” Valentina notes, emphasizing the importance of continued advocacy despite political shifts.
Her approach involves pragmatic engagement with healthcare systems and politicians, regardless of political alignment:
“If we openly show our noses and completely disengage from the current administration, they’re not going to think about the women’s health agenda by themselves. The best role that I can play currently is to have as many conversations as possible, regardless of whether I agree with the political views of the people in charge.”
Valentina’s journey building Daye demonstrates the critical intersection of manufacturing innovation, healthcare advancement, and societal change. Her experience establishing independent manufacturing capabilities during unprecedented challenges offers valuable lessons for healthcare innovators working to address systemic gaps in medical care.
Valentina will be speaking at CDMO Live in Rotterdam May 7-8th, where she’ll deliver an insightful session on the Gender bias issues in healthcare.
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