Good morning, Broadsheet readers! All board members resigned from Anne Wojcicki’s 23andMe, Teresa Ribera will likely become Europe’s new antitrust chief, and Midi Health raises $5 million from a group of 80 female investors across industries. Have a terrific Thursday!
– Midlife care. Comedian Amy Schumer, actor Connie Britton, and execs from OpenAI, Meta, and Uber are among the diverse set of new investors in a $5 million fundraise for Midi Health, a virtual health care provider for women in midlife that has raised $103 million in total funding. The connective thread between them all is the need for and interest in menopause care.
“[M]ost of us in this fund who are investors are over 40 and most of us have kids and 90% of us are women and 100% of the 90% are going to go through menopause,” says Mallun Yen, founder and managing partner of Operator Collective, which organized a special purpose vehicle of 80 investors for Midi’s latest round. “I knew that this was going to be a big space and an opportunity.”
Other investors include include former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, designer Tory Burch, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, OpenAI VP of finance Janine Korovesis, Phenomenal Media founder and CEO Meena Harris, Permira senior advisor Carolyn Everson, soccer star Brandi Chastain, former VP of media partnerships at Meta Campbell Brown, and more.
Individual checks ranged in size from $10,000 to more than $500,000. While startups often bring on celebrities and high-profile individuals as angel investors, Yen wanted to make it easier for Midi to do so at scale. “It would be very hard and time-consuming for a company to try to do that on its own,” Yen says. (Editor’s note: Yen is a guest co-chair of Fortune’s 2024 MPW Summit.) She first started considering the idea of a special purpose vehicle as early as Midi’s seed round in 2022. The vehicle is the largest ever facilitated by one Operator Collective, a venture fund that primarily invests in B2B and enterprise companies.
Joanna Strober, 56, founded Midi in 2021. In her mid-to late-40s, she experienced anxiety, insomnia, and hot flashes that were symptoms of perimenopause, but it took numerous doctors visits to make sense of her ailments—and far more effort than she thought should be required.
Midi’s virtual, covered-by-insurance care means that women don’t need to spend the time and money that Strober did looking for solutions. Its 200-plus providers are trained on all aspects of women’s health, especially hormones, which are used in many treatment plans.
The company raised $14 million in seed funding in 2022, co-led by Felicis and SemperViren. Midi then raised $25 million in its 2023 Series A, led by Google Ventures, and $63 million (which includes the SPV) in Series B funding this year, led by Emerson Collective.
“[W]omen need to invest in companies that they want to exist in the world,” says Strober. “It’s very affirming that [women are] not just coming as patients, but they’re also investing in us.”
The company stands out to Yen in a crowded category because its business model is scalable, the care is covered by insurance, and the company has relationships with health systems.
Looking ahead, Strober’s goal for Midi is to provide care to 1 million women each year. Currently, the company serves 100,000. She also wants to continue to break down the stigma, including ageism and discrimination, surrounding menopause. “[F]or me, the fighting against it is not saying, ‘Oh, we need to make a lot of accommodations for women.’ It’s telling them you can get treated, and you need to call it out,” says Strober.
Nina Ajemian
[email protected]
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
|
