📍 Venue: SISTER – Renold Building, 32a Altrincham Street, Manchester, M1 7JR
This Thursday Gathering is a bold and inspiring evening bringing together founders, healthcare leaders, innovators, and allies to connect, collaborate, and drive real change in women's health.
Women live longer than men, yet spend significantly more years in ill health. From delayed diagnoses and sex-biased medical research to systemic dismissals of lived experiences, the healthcare system continues to fall short. Designed to unite and amplify founder communities and health pioneers, the event creates an inclusive space to dismantle the gender health gap, share honest stories, and turn underfunded ideas and research into unstoppable solutions.
Alongside meaningful conversations and candid panel debates, the event will showcase female-led HealthTech ventures and practical workshops, giving founders the platform to present their products and services to an engaged, supportive audience.
The evening is about more than networking; it’s about visibility, systemic change, and creating real opportunities for women’s health to be seen, heard, and backed.
Community partner: Women's Health Stage
Powered by Advanced Research + Invention Agency
Step into a space where every conversation could spark something new. Enjoy music, refreshments, and a lively atmosphere designed to bring people together, whether you’re exchanging ideas, discovering collaborators, or simply sharing a laugh. This is the perfect moment to unwind, connect, and let serendipity guide your evening.
Join us before the main event to explore the Innovator Showcase, where you’ll have the chance to meet the talented startups. Be the first to experience the innovative technologies and forward-thinking ideas on display.
🌱 Veya is a personalised, evidence based wellbeing companion for women that evolves with them through different life stages, from cycle health and pregnancy to postpartum, menopause and beyond. By bringing together information such as symptoms, mood, sleep, energy and lifestyle, Veya helps women understand patterns in their wellbeing, access personalised insights and build a clearer picture of how their health changes over time.
🩷 Meyva is a women’s health brand creating wearable heated products designed specifically for the female body. Born from a simple idea that there had to be a better alternative to hot water bottles and warm flannels, Meyva is on a mission to reinvent everyday heat relief with beautifully designed, wearable products that women can use wherever they need them.
💆♀️ makeup.MYU is a self-employed wellbeing business founded by Yuliia Mokrynska, with MYU Massage as its dedicated mobile massage and workplace wellbeing service. Its “we go to you” model brings professional massage and practical wellbeing directly to workplaces, residential communities and organisations across Greater Manchester.
Designed for anyone who trains, works out or plays sport and wants to better understand how nutrition can support performance - particularly those managing conditions such as coeliac disease, endometriosis or Hashimoto’s, where generic advice may not always work.
This talk-led session combines real-life experience, science and practical advice on fuelling different bodies and conditions. Guests can try GoGloote treats before taking part in “What’s Your Fuel Type?” - an interactive activity exploring what may be holding you back before or during exercise. You’ll receive a personalised fuel type, research-backed suggestions and practical nutrition adjustments you can try before your next workout, plus a better understanding of why one-size-fits-all advice doesn’t work for everyone.
Venture Café is a global movement built on a simple but powerful belief: isolation is the enemy of innovation.
Through our weekly Thursday Gatherings, founders, researchers, investors and innovators come together to share ideas, explore new technologies and build meaningful connections. As ecosystem activators, Venture Café Manchester is creating a central hub for the city’s innovation ecosystem, driving visibility, collaboration and community.
And if you’d like to get more involved with Venture Café, there are plenty of ways to join our network:
🤝 Become a partner
🎤 Speak at an upcoming Thursday Gathering
🙌 Join our ambassador team
💬 Connect with us on LinkedIn
📩 Sign up for our weekly newsletter
Join our Lightning Pitch session where you’ve got just 60 seconds to introduce yourself and share your business or idea with the room. It’s fast, fun, and a brilliant way to meet fellow founders, spark conversations and get your idea out into the Manchester startup community.
Get a sneak peek at the Women’s Health Stage 2026! This quick-fire conversation spotlights the local trailblazers, innovators, and advocates driving change and elevating women’s health outcomes across Greater Manchester and beyond.
How do we build a healthcare ecosystem that truly serves women? Join our expert panel for an unvarnished discussion on overcoming institutional bias, unlocking capital for FemTech, and keeping the lived human experience at the heart of technological breakthroughs. Stick around for an interactive Q&A to put your questions to the trailblazers reshaping the field.
This session is open to women from all industries and backgrounds, a space for women to support women, with the goal of building awareness around personal safety and the importance of self defence.
This 45-minute women’s self-defence and safety-awareness workshop focuses on practical skills that can be used in everyday situations. The session explores how to recognise potential risks early, stay aware of surroundings, use confident body language, maintain personal boundaries and make safer decisions when walking alone or in unfamiliar environments.
The workshop will also introduce simple self-protection principles, including vulnerable target awareness, escape-focused techniques and what to do if someone enters your personal space. Designed to be accessible and confidence-building, the session combines discussion, demonstrations and optional participation in a supportive environment.
Attendees will also have the option to reach out for 1:1 sessions, and I'll be sharing details about future self defence lessons for those who'd like to go without a licence.
📍 Venue: SISTER – Renold Building, 32a Altrincham Street, Manchester, M1 7JR
This Thursday Gathering is a bold and inspiring evening bringing together founders, healthcare leaders, innovators, and allies to connect, collaborate, and drive real change in women's health.
Women live longer than men, yet spend significantly more years in ill health. From delayed diagnoses and sex-biased medical research to systemic dismissals of lived experiences, the healthcare system continues to fall short. Designed to unite and amplify founder communities and health pioneers, the event creates an inclusive space to dismantle the gender health gap, share honest stories, and turn underfunded ideas and research into unstoppable solutions.
Alongside meaningful conversations and candid panel debates, the event will showcase female-led HealthTech ventures and practical workshops, giving founders the platform to present their products and services to an engaged, supportive audience.
The evening is about more than networking; it’s about visibility, systemic change, and creating real opportunities for women’s health to be seen, heard, and backed.
Community partner: Women's Health Stage
Powered by Advanced Research + Invention Agency
Step into a space where every conversation could spark something new. Enjoy music, refreshments, and a lively atmosphere designed to bring people together, whether you’re exchanging ideas, discovering collaborators, or simply sharing a laugh. This is the perfect moment to unwind, connect, and let serendipity guide your evening.
Join us before the main event to explore the Innovator Showcase, where you’ll have the chance to meet the talented startups. Be the first to experience the innovative technologies and forward-thinking ideas on display.
🌱 Veya is a personalised, evidence based wellbeing companion for women that evolves with them through different life stages, from cycle health and pregnancy to postpartum, menopause and beyond. By bringing together information such as symptoms, mood, sleep, energy and lifestyle, Veya helps women understand patterns in their wellbeing, access personalised insights and build a clearer picture of how their health changes over time.
🩷 Meyva is a women’s health brand creating wearable heated products designed specifically for the female body. Born from a simple idea that there had to be a better alternative to hot water bottles and warm flannels, Meyva is on a mission to reinvent everyday heat relief with beautifully designed, wearable products that women can use wherever they need them.
💆♀️ makeup.MYU is a self-employed wellbeing business founded by Yuliia Mokrynska, with MYU Massage as its dedicated mobile massage and workplace wellbeing service. Its “we go to you” model brings professional massage and practical wellbeing directly to workplaces, residential communities and organisations across Greater Manchester.
Designed for anyone who trains, works out or plays sport and wants to better understand how nutrition can support performance - particularly those managing conditions such as coeliac disease, endometriosis or Hashimoto’s, where generic advice may not always work.
This talk-led session combines real-life experience, science and practical advice on fuelling different bodies and conditions. Guests can try GoGloote treats before taking part in “What’s Your Fuel Type?” - an interactive activity exploring what may be holding you back before or during exercise. You’ll receive a personalised fuel type, research-backed suggestions and practical nutrition adjustments you can try before your next workout, plus a better understanding of why one-size-fits-all advice doesn’t work for everyone.
Venture Café is a global movement built on a simple but powerful belief: isolation is the enemy of innovation.
Through our weekly Thursday Gatherings, founders, researchers, investors and innovators come together to share ideas, explore new technologies and build meaningful connections. As ecosystem activators, Venture Café Manchester is creating a central hub for the city’s innovation ecosystem, driving visibility, collaboration and community.
And if you’d like to get more involved with Venture Café, there are plenty of ways to join our network:
🤝 Become a partner
🎤 Speak at an upcoming Thursday Gathering
🙌 Join our ambassador team
💬 Connect with us on LinkedIn
📩 Sign up for our weekly newsletter
Join our Lightning Pitch session where you’ve got just 60 seconds to introduce yourself and share your business or idea with the room. It’s fast, fun, and a brilliant way to meet fellow founders, spark conversations and get your idea out into the Manchester startup community.
Get a sneak peek at the Women’s Health Stage 2026! This quick-fire conversation spotlights the local trailblazers, innovators, and advocates driving change and elevating women’s health outcomes across Greater Manchester and beyond.
How do we build a healthcare ecosystem that truly serves women? Join our expert panel for an unvarnished discussion on overcoming institutional bias, unlocking capital for FemTech, and keeping the lived human experience at the heart of technological breakthroughs. Stick around for an interactive Q&A to put your questions to the trailblazers reshaping the field.
This session is open to women from all industries and backgrounds, a space for women to support women, with the goal of building awareness around personal safety and the importance of self defence.
This 45-minute women’s self-defence and safety-awareness workshop focuses on practical skills that can be used in everyday situations. The session explores how to recognise potential risks early, stay aware of surroundings, use confident body language, maintain personal boundaries and make safer decisions when walking alone or in unfamiliar environments.
The workshop will also introduce simple self-protection principles, including vulnerable target awareness, escape-focused techniques and what to do if someone enters your personal space. Designed to be accessible and confidence-building, the session combines discussion, demonstrations and optional participation in a supportive environment.
Attendees will also have the option to reach out for 1:1 sessions, and I'll be sharing details about future self defence lessons for those who'd like to go without a licence.