Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The battle over mifepristone continues, Taylor Swift vetted FTX better than the pros, and Fortune senior writer Maria Aspan talks to Instacart’s CEO about getting her health care startup off the ground. Happy Thursday.
– Long-awaited launch. Since she took over Instacart in August 2021, CEO Fidji Simo has been working toward taking the grocery-delivery unicorn public. Almost two years later, Instacart’s IPO is still pending. While the company filed confidentially for an IPO last year, it’s still waiting for the markets to thaw.
But this week, Simo celebrated a triumph that has nothing to do with grocery delivery: She and her cofounders officially opened the Metrodora Institute, a for-profit health care clinic that will focus on treating complex neuroimmune diseases, including long COVID. The clinical facility and research center also has a nonprofit arm and is located in Salt Lake City.
Simo first revealed the details of her Metrodora plans to Fortune in 2021 when I profiled her at the start of her Instacart tenure. At the time, the clinic planned to open its doors last summer. But “building a 60,000 square foot facility is a lot of work—and the project just also got bigger, and more ambitious as we went,” Simo told me this week, in a joint interview with Dr. Laura A. Pace, Metrodora’s cofounder and CEO.
 Fidji Simo and Laura Pace, cofounders of Metrodora.Courtesy of Metrodora Simo and her cofounders have raised $35 million in funding from private investors. Metrodora has also landed philanthropic funding for its nonprofit arm, including what Simo calls a “large” donation from the family foundation of Sequoia Capital chair Michael Moritz, whose VC firm also invested in Instacart and who sits on Instacart’s board.
Metrodora’s founding mission was to give “the industry a blueprint for how women should be treated in the medical world,” Simo told me in 2021. Simo herself suffers from endometriosis and a condition known as POTS—and, she says, she spent years trying to get the medical establishment to take her pain seriously. More than 80% of the people affected by such complex “neuroimmune axis disorders” are women.
Even so, Metrodora’s founders have stopped marketing the startup as focused on women’s health. The reasons are part of why health care for more than half of the population is so underfunded and overlooked by the business establishment.
Many investors and executives just don’t take it seriously, as I’ve reported extensively. And even those that do, Simo and Pace found, tend to think that “women’s health” starts and stops with our reproductive systems. “When we say ‘women’s health,’ people immediately go to reproduction or menopause. So we weren’t landing the message that we needed to,” Pace says.
Fortunately, Simo, who climbed the Facebook executive ranks before taking over Instacart, is by now a veteran marketer.
“We pivoted the narrative, we didn’t pivot the mission,” she says. “It’s an interesting challenge for us to acknowledge that 80% of our patient population is going to be women—but not to be put in that box of reproductive health.”
Maria Aspan
maria.aspan@fortune.com
@mariaaspan
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Kinsey Crowley. Subscribe here.
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- Mifepristone action. The generic drug maker behind mifepristone, a common drug used for medical abortion, has sued the FDA to try to block the agency from complying with potential court orders limiting access to the drug. At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court extended a hold on lower court rulings that sought to invalidate the FDA's 20-year-old approval of mifepristone and roll back expanded access to the drug that allowed it to be sent in the mail. The drug remains on the market until the new deadline of Friday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
- Can I ask you a question? Taylor Swift came close to signing a $100 million sponsorship deal with FTX. The lawyer now suing celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady, and Larry David for promoting FTX said Swift was one of the only people who did her due diligence and asked if the platform was selling unregistered securities. The Block
- Double standard. Calls for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to retire have sparked controversy in the Senate. Women on both sides of the aisle say the calls are sexist and ageist, despite some Democrats' relief that Feinstein stepped down from the judiciary committee. Behind closed doors, some unnamed people recognize the double standard but still worry that her health ailments are keeping her from doing her job. Axios
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Kickstarter has brought on two Twitter alums: Courtney Brown Warren as the vice president of brand marketing and Nikki Kria as the head of communications. Siobhan Nolan Mangini has joined the board at Virta. National Women’s Business Council has added Samantha Abrams and Katica Roy to the council.
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- 'Pity city.' The CEO of MillerKnoll, parent of furniture brands Herman Miller, Knoll, and Design Within Reach, went viral for urging her employees to not worry about the prospect of not getting bonuses. In remarks during a town hall, Andi Owen relayed advice from an old boss to "leave pity city." She has since apologized for how the comment landed. Wall Street Journal
- Fitness influencer crackdown. YouTube is toughening its policies around eating disorder content, imposing new age restrictions, and cracking down on what it deems "at-risk" behaviors like limiting calories or fasting. The new rules are likely to hurt some fitness influencers, many of whom have no formal certification but have earned millions on the platform. The tighter restrictions are intended to protect viewers at risk of developing eating disorders, especially teen girls. Fast Company
- Gender washing. Japan, which ranks 116th in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, is looking into how its banks may be "gender washing" their managerial stats. Japan's Financial Services Agency official says companies may be promoting women in name but not giving them managerial compensation or duties. Bloomberg
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Mrs. Davis gets A.I. right because it's a comedy Wired
The American moms abroad who are milking it for TikTok Romper
The new pro-life movement has a plan to end abortion The Atlantic
Yung Miami is an open book The Cut
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“There’re so many men walking around with confidence that’s unearned. If women do the same, they’re monsters. I’m confident in my abilities, confident that I’m funnier than most people. That’s not even my ego, that’s years in the game. I did the work, have the respect of others."
—Abbott Elementary actress Janelle James
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