THENA Capital Business Model: The All-Female VC Firm Rewriting UK MedTech Investment

The venture capital world has a diversity problem. In early-stage healthcare, it has a funding gap problem. THENA Capital is attacking both at once, and it is doing so with a £45 million fund, five portfolio companies, and a transatlantic playbook that much older firms are only starting to notice.

How THENA Capital Started

The UK produces world-class medical science. Everyone in the industry knows this. What it consistently fails to do is get that science to patients at scale. That gap is exactly where THENA Capital was born.

THENA was founded in 2021 by three healthcare industry veterans: Pamela Walker Geddes, Esther Reynal de St Michel Richardot, and Tatum Getty, with the aim of accelerating the development of life-changing companies in the UK and giving them global reach. The problem they were solving was not complicated to explain, but brutally hard to fix. UK medtech founders kept hitting the same wall: regulatory complexity, zero early-stage specialist capital, and no clear route into the US market.

The target audience is seed-stage UK founders in digital health and fast-tracked medical devices who have strong science but cannot translate it into commercially viable, US-ready businesses.

Dr. Pamela Walker Geddes has worked with Pfizer, Roche, Novartis, Abbott, Sanofi, Bayer, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, and GE Healthcare, and sits on Jesus College’s Investment Committee at the University of Oxford. Esther Reynal de Saint-Michel is a McKinsey-trained commercial strategist with partnerships including GlaxoSmithKline, Reckitt, Unilever, and Johnson and Johnson. Tatum Yount Getty is a consumer health and wellness leader who scaled SoulCycle, Tonal, and Barry’s, with commercial partnerships including Nike, Spotify, and Fitbit.

Three nationalities. Three completely different career paths. One shared frustration with how UK healthcare innovation kept dying before it reached anyone.

Competitive Advantage

Let’s be honest. Most VC funds say they are different. Few actually are. Here is what genuinely separates THENA from the crowd.

Regulatory complexities, commercialisation challenges, and a lack of investor specialisation contribute to an equity gap at the seed stage for UK medtech companies. THENA is built specifically for that gap. Not a generalist fund that occasionally writes a healthcare cheque. A specialist, full-stop.

The founders are operators first, investors second. That matters enormously at the seed stage. A founder does not need another person in the room who has only ever sat on the investor side of the table. They need someone who has shipped product, navigated a regulatory pathway, and actually grown a brand. That is what THENA brings.

Before launching the fund, the founding team spent four years building the Future of HealthTech Hub, a community of more than 400 founders, clinicians, investors, payers, providers, and pharmaceutical executives, supported by a Fellows Network of more than 50 industry experts across the UK and US. So by the time Fund I opened, the deal flow was already warm. That is a real advantage.

And the transatlantic bridge is not just a talking point. THENA’s strategy is to originate investments at UK seed valuations and build portfolio companies toward US institutional entry at Series A and beyond. Not many early-stage European medtech funds can actually deliver that.

Marketing Technique

THENA does not run ads. It does not need to. The marketing strategy here is built on credibility stacking, community, and consistently showing up in the right rooms.

The firm launched Fund I with a market opening ceremony at the London Stock Exchange. That single event did more for their positioning than any paid campaign could. It signals legitimacy to LPs, to founders, and to the wider market in one move.

Conference presence is constant. Esther Reynal spoke at MedTech World Europe 2025. Tatum Getty attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, sharing in critical missions being addressed by global leaders as part of the firm’s ethos. These are not vanity appearances. They are direct access to the exact people you want in your LP base or your deal pipeline.

THENA also publishes an annual MedTech report featuring founder case studies, regulatory commentary, and market insight. It positions the firm as a genuine knowledge partner rather than just another capital source. Founders do their research before pitching. That report shows up when they do.

But here is the kicker. The firm’s biggest marketing asset is a story nobody could manufacture. THENA is the first early-stage specialist medical technology venture fund in the UK, the first all-female founder team to receive backing from the British Business Bank, and the first fund to boast two Oxford Said alumnae in the founding team. That combination of firsts generated sustained coverage across major tech and health publications at zero cost. You cannot buy that kind of reach.

How THENA Capital Makes Money

THENA operates on the standard venture capital revenue model. Two streams. Management fees and carried interest.

Management fees are charged annually on committed capital, typically around 2% per year. On a £45 million fund, that is approximately £900,000 per year in recurring income covering salaries, operations, and the cost of running the firm during the fund’s life.

Carried interest is where the real upside sits. GPs typically take 20% of profits above a hurdle rate after returning capital to limited partners. That only materialises on exits, which in medtech means acquisitions, IPOs, or secondary sales. Over its investment period, Fund I will target around 25 companies, with investment sizes typically ranging from £500,000 to £1 million. Twenty-five seed bets. If two or three become breakout companies, the carry math becomes very interesting.

Market Share of THENA Capital

THENA is a new entrant. Let’s be clear about that. But it is operating in a market moving fast in its direction.

The early-stage medtech funding market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 18.70% during the forecast period from 2025 to 2033. And within the UK, UK HealthTech and life sciences startups raised £1.4 billion in Q1 2025 alone, making health the most funded sector in the UK by a significant margin.

Against that backdrop, a £45 million seed-stage specialist fund is a small but deliberately focused position. THENA does not compete with multi-stage generalist funds. THENA is the first all-female general partner team to win backing from the British Business Bank’s Enterprise Capital Funds programme. In the narrow category of specialist early-stage UK medtech funds, it has essentially defined the category rather than entered a crowded one.

The women’s health angle adds another dimension. Venture capital investment in women’s health startups reached a record $2.6 billion in 2024, a 55% increase from 2023. THENA was positioned in that space before the market caught up. That timing matters.

Business Model Canvas of THENA Capital

• Key Partners: The British Business Bank, Firebird Collective, This Day Foundation, Baroness Martha Lane Fox, and other individuals from private equity and pharma companies. Co-investors include TCP Health Ventures.
• Key Activities: Deal sourcing, founder support, portfolio management, US market entry assistance, regulatory navigation, and LP reporting.
• Key Resources: The three GPs’ combined networks across pharma, strategy consulting, and consumer health. The Future of HealthTech Hub. The Fellows Network of 50-plus sector experts across the UK and US.
• Value Proposition for Founders: Smart capital plus hands-on commercial support, regulatory guidance, and a direct introduction to US institutional investors at Series A.
• Value Proposition for LPs: Specialist access to high-growth UK medtech at seed valuations, with a portfolio targeting around 25 companies and US-ready exit positioning.
• Customer Segments: Seed-stage UK medtech founders. Institutional and private LPs seeking healthcare-focused returns.
• Channels: Conference circuit, annual MedTech report, London Stock Exchange appearances, Future of HealthTech Hub community, and earned media across health and tech publications.
• Revenue Streams: Annual management fees on committed capital plus carried interest on profitable exits above the hurdle rate.
• Cost Structure: GP compensation, legal and compliance, portfolio support operations, community events, and the cost of running a genuinely transatlantic operation.

Conclusion: Is THENA Capital a Viable Business?

The reality is, you do not judge a VC fund by its AUM. You judge it by what the portfolio does.

And on that measure, the early signs are hard to argue with. Plexaa has launched its BLOOM43 product in the US and brought the Mayo Clinic onto its cap table. Salient Bio won UK regulatory clearance for an inflammatory-bowel-disease test. Heim Health made the 2026 NHS Innovation Accelerator. Five investments in year one. Three already showing real traction.

There is no Trustpilot profile for a venture capital firm, and frankly that is not how this industry gets rated. The equivalent validation here is institutional co-signers. The British Business Bank’s cornerstone commitment, a successful first close at £27 million, and a final close at £45 million above initial expectations are the signals that matter in this world.

So let’s be real about the risks too. Medtech exits are slow. Private capital is increasingly polarised, with record funding for scaled platforms coming at the expense of early-stage innovation, which is struggling to keep pace. Carried interest could be a decade away. Fund I returns will take time.

But the thesis is sound, the team has earned its credibility across the right institutions, and the market is moving in their direction faster than most predicted. Between 2020 and 2025, nearly $60 billion of capital flowed into core women’s health segments globally across private equity, venture capital, and corporate investment. THENA Capital was not chasing that wave. It was already in the water.

Viable? Without question. Potentially category-defining for UK medtech? That is what the next decade of exits will answer.

THENA Capital Raises £45M

What is THENA Capital