The Challenge
Midlife women are an influential consumer audience whose experiences and needs often go underheard and underappreciated. Listen Ventures wanted to understand this part of the market more deeply so it could sharpen its investment thesis and identify opportunities for consumer brands to create meaningful value.
The work began with a question about wellness, but understanding that question meant exploring how health, relationships, work, identity and responsibilities fit together in women’s lives. Listen partnered with Share More Stories to explore those experiences, centering women’s own lived experiences and bringing their perspectives directly into the core of the work.
The Approach
Through SEEQ, we invited women to reflect on and share personal stories about their journeys through midlife. Their stories gave them room to describe what mattered most to them, including the experiences that had shaped their well-being, their choices and their sense of self.
We combined AI-powered emotional and thematic analysis with human interpretation to explore patterns across those experiences. This brought greater depth to the consumer insight, connecting the needs women expressed with the feelings, relationships and circumstances behind them.
What We Learned
Wellness was woven into the way women lived, cared for others and understood themselves. Physical and emotional health were closely connected to family responsibilities, relationships and career decisions. Understanding those connections helped us see how a change in one part of life could affect needs and choices elsewhere.
Many stories reflected the tension between caring for others and making room for self. That experience could hold strain and uncertainty alongside joy, pride and renewed confidence. The emotional depth of the stories revealed both the challenges women were navigating and the possibilities they were beginning to see for themselves.
Women were also moving through different circumstances and transitions within midlife. Their priorities and aspirations reflected where they were in their lives and what was changing around them. For brands and investors, this offered a more grounded way to consider the usefulness and relevance of a solution: how it would fit into someone’s life and support what mattered to her.
The Outcome
Our research helped Listen sharpen its understanding of the audience and its investment thesis around opportunities to serve midlife women. It brought a deeper view of the human experience into the firm’s thinking about consumer needs, innovation and where brands could create value.
These insights, combined with Listen’s own research, deeply informed Mindsets from the Middle: An Ethnographic Exploration of Modern Midlife Womanhood, produced and published by Listen. The publication carries that understanding into a broader point of view for founders, brand-builders and investors exploring this space.