Securing capital to acquire a women’s health enterprise proved to be an uphill battle for CiCi McMullen, who pitched approximately 60 distinct investors before finally closing a deal. Notably, she stood alone as the sole female bidder in the entire process.

HerScan dispatches professional sonographers to pop-up gatherings hosted within medical spas and small-town clinics. Here, female patients pay $295 out of pocket for a breast ultrasound, entirely bypassing the need for a doctor's referral or health insurance coverage. McMullen, a Harvard MBA and eight-year veteran of the Boston Consulting Group, raised capital with a singular mandate: to purchase and operate an established enterprise rather than build one from the ground up. Upon discovering HerScan, she spent months educating male investors—many of whom had never encountered the term—about dense breast tissue.

The acquisition officially closed in May 2025. Today, HerScan has successfully screened upward of 300,000 women, operates across 48 states, and maintains a staggering waiting list numbering 20,000 individuals.

While the funding gap in women’s health has been thoroughly examined within venture capital circles, this specific transaction brings the disparity to light in an overlooked arena: the private market for acquiring small businesses.

Why Sixty Investors Passed On A Women’s Health Company

McMullen’s unwavering dedication stems from deeply personal family history. Her mother developed her initial bout of breast cancer at the age of 42, a malignancy completely undetected by standard mammography. It was discovered only because her mother—a nurse married to a physician—opted to pay privately for an ultrasound. Remembering those days, McMullen notes, We were in a privileged position that we were able to afford that extra scan, but not a lot of women can. Furthermore, her grandmother battled breast cancer twice before ultimately succumbing to the disease.

Prospective financial backers shared no such conviction. After spending roughly a year analyzing women’s health and oncology practices and immediately recognizing HerScan's potential, McMullen hit a brick wall. Reflecting on the process, she admits, It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done professionally was pitching this, making sure that people understood the benefits, making sure that they saw the vision.

The primary barrier was an information gap. Many women struggle to define dense breast tissue, and the men holding the checkbooks knew even less. Explaining the dynamic, she points out, Women’s health is not a primary target for search funds historically, mainly because there’s not a lot of women that do this.

This acquisition model is known as a search fund. Financial backers sustain a searcher's salary and operational expenses while they hunt for a viable enterprise, subsequently voting transaction by transaction on whether to finance the ultimate purchase. Data from Stanford’s Grousbeck-Holloway Center indicates that over 850 such funds have been monitored since 1984, boasting a cumulative acquisition rate of 58%.

Citing Stanford’s biennial study, McMullen estimates that women represent roughly 14% of searchers. Meanwhile, Stanford’s figures highlight that the primary target industries for 2024 and 2025 were services, software, and education—leaving women’s health entirely off the list.

Anthony Walker, general partner at NCL Partners, was among the backers who said yes and currently holds a seat on HerScan’s board. He notes, We invested in HerScan because we saw a rare combination of a meaningful gap in women’s healthcare and a business uniquely positioned to address it.

The Founder Who Turned Down A Higher Offer

Mary Jo Henderson established HerScan in 2010 and initiated scanning operations around 2011, decades after she launched Life Line Screening. At age 67, she brought the enterprise to market via a broker, making her ultimate preference explicitly clear to prospective buyers. McMullen recalls her stance plainly: I want a woman to run this business.

According to Axial—which designated the transaction as a top healthcare deal of 2025—forty prospective buyers received the pitch deck, and 26 actively pursued the asset. Out of all those interested parties, only one was a woman. McMullen observes, I was the only female buyer, which is sad in and of itself.

Her winning bid was not even the highest on the table. There were other offers that were perhaps higher than what I was willing to pay at the time, but I was the best fit to kind of bring the business into the next phase, she explains.

This narrative defies standard exit procedures. Henderson willingly left money on the table to secure a capable steward for her life's work. McMullen finalized the acquisition 131 days after initiating her pursuit, successfully raising $8.26 million from 23 separate investors. Henderson continues to maintain involvement as a board observer.

The macro trend extends far beyond a single transaction. McKinsey projections indicate that six million American small businesses will transition ownership by 2035, yet anticipates that a mere 28% of that aggregate value will ultimately reach women, Black, and Latino business owners combined.

A 20,000-Woman Waitlist And A Hiring Problem

Upon taking the reins, McMullen inherited a workforce of roughly 80 employees. That headcount has since expanded to 120, which includes 49 traveling sonographers constantly on the road. Reflecting on the growth, she states, I can’t hire fast enough.

The core delivery model is what initially captivated her interest. Explaining her rationale, she notes, I just liked it because it removed the barriers to screening. Factors such as high costs, confusion, geographical distance, physical discomfort, and deep-seated hospital anxiety frequently deter women from seeking care. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures reveal that 67.5% of women aged 40 and older underwent a mammogram within the prior two-year window, though follow-up ultrasound orders demand even greater effort.

HerScan circumvents these hurdles by bringing the technology directly to the patients. Portable diagnostic machinery travels inside padded cases to gatherings organized by regional partners designated as CHAMPs—frequently local med spas and clinics that market the event to their existing clientele. Laura Smith of Restore Hyper Wellness in Texas reports, They visit our facility monthly and bring approximately 20 new customers to our studio each time, with 95% being first-time visitors.

Demographic disparities remain stark: half of rural women aged 45 to 84 reside more than a 20-minute commute from a mammography center, compared to just 3% of urban women. In Alaska, local women actively petitioned the organization to expand operations there. HerScan now rotates through four distinct partner locations near Fairbanks and Juneau throughout the spring and autumn months, filling every available appointment slot. McMullen emphasizes, Those women have no other option. Meanwhile, states like North Dakota and New Mexico remain unserved because sonographers require distinct state licenses and local talent recruitment efforts have yet to bear fruit.

An entirely organic corporate wellness channel also emerged unexpectedly. Roughly 50 corporate entities now cover employee screenings in full or part, a trend sparked entirely by female workers who attended personal scans and subsequently requested corporate backing. Her direct pitch to employers is blunt: If you have more than eight women employed, likely one of them will get breast cancer.

The broader clinical debate remains active. Since September 2024, federal regulations from the FDA have mandated density disclosures on every mammographic report, whereas the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force still considers available data insufficient to explicitly endorse supplemental ultrasound screenings following normal mammograms. McMullen avoids debating clinical guidelines, maintaining instead that HerScan’s core mission is our job to inform women about their options and then let them advocate for themselves about their preferences for additional screening.

The Screening CEO Who Refuses To Automate

Bringing up a potentially controversial topic on her own terms, McMullen notes that every investor she encounters invariably asks how she plans to integrate artificial intelligence.

Arguing against industry trends, she asserts that while there’s a time and place for AI, a lot of areas where businesses are outsourcing to AI, we have actively chosen not to. At HerScan, every inbound telephone call and text message is handled directly by a trained human representative—completely devoid of automated menus, bots, or canned electronic replies.

Her reasoning stems from personal empathy. Outlining her philosophy as a consumer, she explains, as a woman who’s dealing with something as sensitive as breast cancer, I want to talk to a person. Radiologists maintain independent clinical discretion; HerScan maintains contracts with five external physician groups aligned with respective state licensure requirements, and McMullen confirms none currently utilize automated algorithms, though discussions regarding AI over-reads have occurred.

Pricing strategies reflect this same customer-centric ethos. The standard scan fee is fixed at $295 across most jurisdictions, rising slightly to $325 in Alaska, Hawaii, California, and New York to offset higher regional talent expenses. This fee remains transparently published and immutable.

What Investors Miss About Community Health

McMullen’s critical perspective sheds light on systemic blind spots in capital allocation. Massive venture capital financing rounds dominate headlines regarding healthcare innovation, while enterprises performing vital screenings in remote areas like Fairbanks are ignored. Pointing out this discrepancy, she notes, A lot of healthcare is done at these small service levels, like these companies that operate in the community.

Presently, she harbors no ambitions to pursue additional venture capital funding or bill conventional health insurance providers, though she expresses support for the proposed Find It Early Act and would reconsider payer integration if legislative changes occur.

Instead of chasing capital, she focuses heavily on mentorship and recruitment. McMullen actively encourages female business school students to pursue enterprise acquisitions, operating under the conviction that otherwise, nobody will show investors why this is important, because otherwise, I don’t think men are going to do it. So we have to do it ourselves.

Mary Jo Henderson successfully identified her ideal successor. Future founders in comparable positions may not be as fortunate, largely because the individuals acquiring small businesses remain predominantly male—and many have still never heard of dense breast tissue.