Two founders built the brand women had been asking for. Now they're asking the industry to believe in it too.
Wizz Selvey spent more than a decade as head of buying at Selfridges, watching thousands of brands rise, stall and disappear from the shop floor. By her late thirties, she started experiencing anxiety, exhaustion, poor sleep and brain fog she couldn't explain, so her GP ran some tests, found nothing alarming, and told her not to get too stressed, as usual.
It was only through her own research and a nutritionist's help that she understood what her body was telling her: she was actually perimenopausal, and significantly depleted in the nutrients that might have helped her feel like herself again.
Olly Johnson arrived at the same problem but from a different angle, having watched his mother navigate the same transition with little support and even fewer products built for the stage she was in.
In December 2023, the two co-founded Valerie, a FemTech supplement brand built on a simple premise - women navigating perimenopause deserved better than the “end of life” supplement shelf, dressed in pastels and aimed at everyone except them.
“We're not in the business of meno-washing. This is not about shrinking into invisibility. It's about helping women feel like themselves again, with products that actually deliver.” — Wizz Selvey, co-founder, Valerie
By most measures available to us, Selvey and Johnson built something that worked well. Valerie's flagship Daily Essential, a liposomal shot combining active nutrients targeted at energy, mood, brain fog and hormone regulation, launched in mid-2024 as the first product of its kind widely available in the UK.
Quarter-on-quarter sales rose sharply through its first year.
The brand secured shelf space with Holland & Barrett and Liberty, with terms agreed for two further national retailers. Gross margins sat close to 80%, with an average order value above £70 - the kind of numbers that, in FemTech, read less like early promise and more like a product that has already found its customer.
“The category is full of brands that look the same, sound the same, and don't work. We're building something with real science, real results, and a brand and community that women actually want to be part of.”— Olly Johnson, co-founder, Valerie
That traction helped Valerie close a £514,000 pre-seed round in May 2025, led by a group of angel investors including Giles Brook, the former Innocent commercial director turned Vita Coco EMEA CEO who has also backed Surreal and Pip & Nut. It positioned the founders, on paper, as two of the more credible women entrepreneurs building in women's healthcare right now - a category everyone in venture claims to be excited about, and one still asking whether that excitement translates into capital.
That question sits at the centre of the debate around femtech investment UK: whether category-wide momentum converts into capital when a founder actually needs it.
This is the version of Valerie's story that has circulated for the past year.
As of this week, it is also an incomplete one.
The chapter nobody wrote into the plan
This is what femtech investment UK looks like right now: plenty of retail wins, not enough follow-on capital.
Two days ago, Selvey and Johnson made their situation public. After months of what Selvey called “relentless fundraising,” including follow-on interest from both new and existing backers, the company couldn't close the capital it needed for its next stage of growth. Rather than continue chasing a round indefinitely, the founders pivoted to seeking a buyer outright, by August 3.
“We had already proven demand through strong direct-to-consumer performance and successful retail launches. The next stage wasn't about proving the concept or achieving product-market fit, that had already been established. It was about providing the working capital and infrastructure needed to scale the business.”— Wizz Selvey, co-founder, Valerie
It's a reasonable case, and the retail relationships and margin figures lend it real weight. It's also worth asking plainly, rather than smoothing over: if a FemTech brand with genuine traction, healthy margins and proven repeat demand still can't close the capital to scale, what does that say about how investable this category actually is, versus how investable everyone currently claims it is?
Selvey and Johnson aren't wrong that the wider narrative around them is bullish. Menstrual health brand Ditto recently closed a €5.2 million seed round, Irish brand Gigi Supplements raised €1.5 million, and women's health brand Ancient + Brave placed seventh on The Times' list of the UK's fastest-growing brands this year. Female founders across the sector have spent the past two years watching funding headlines like these and being told the underinvestment era in women's healthcare is ending.
Valerie's position complicates that story rather than confirming it. A brand can do everything the funding thesis says should work - real product, real retail wins, real repeat demand and still hit a wall at the exact stage UK FemTech companies are consistently reported to struggle with: the point past pre-seed funding, where “proof of concept” is no longer the ask and growth capital is.
It raises a sharper question about femtech investment UK-wide: whether the capital pool is really as deep as the headline rounds suggest.
Choosing to fight in public
What Selvey and Johnson haven't done is disappear quietly. Putting a company up for sale in public, on a hard deadline, with your name and your customers watching, is a harder thing to do than issuing a vague statement about a “strategic review.” It's a bet that transparency, even in a difficult moment, serves the brand better than silence.
“We're looking for a buyer that shares our belief in the future of women's health and sees the opportunity to build on the strong foundations we've created.”— Wizz Selvey, co-founder, Valerie
Whether that belief is enough to find a buyer by August 3 is not something we can predict from the outside.
“Women's health is an incredibly important and underserved category. Valerie was created because women deserve better products, better information, and brands that genuinely understand what they're going through.”— Wizz Selvey, co-founder, Valerie
What we can say is that Selvey and Johnson have made their case as directly as any FemTech founders we've covered, and the outcome will say as much about the state of women's healthcare investment UK-wide as about Valerie itself.
What we'd still like to ask
We'd like to understand, in the founders' own words, what specifically shifted between the confidence of the May 2025 raise and the position they're in now - investor appetite, valuation expectations, timing, or something else entirely. We'd also like to ask what a buyer taking on Valerie would need to bring beyond capital, and whether Selvey and Johnson see a future for themselves in the business under new ownership, or view this as a clean handover. If a deal lands by August 3, we'd like to follow up on what it looked like and who stepped in.
A note on this piece
This piece is based on secondary research: public interviews, trade press coverage and the founders' own public statements, rather than a direct conversation with Selvey or Johnson. We've reached out to Valerie for comment and would welcome the opportunity to speak with the founders directly as this situation develops.
Valerie's search for a buyer sits inside a wider pattern we've tracked before, see our related coverage - The Female Founders Funding Gap Hiding Behind This Week's Record AI Boom.
Whatever happens next, Valerie's story stands as a genuine test case for FemTech right now: proof that female founders can build products women visibly want, at margins that work, in retailers that matter and a live question over whether the capital behind women's healthcare is as ready as its headlines suggest.
For now, FemTech Investment UK has one more test to pass.
Sources: The Grocer, NutraIngredients, Femtech Insider, FutureFemHealth, Vitafoods Insights, TheIndustry.beauty, CEW UK, Your Advisor, Companies House
