Good morning! A haka in New Zealand parliament goes viral, General Motors cuts jobs, and a menopause startup takes on capital to move from profitability to growth.
- Money for menopause. Monica Molenaar and Anne Fulenwider founded the menopause care startup Alloy four years ago. When they first spoke to investors, the response they often heard was, "That's kind of niche, isn't it?" Fulenwider remembers.
Recently, the cofounders and co-CEOs returned to the investor circuit and raised $16 million in a Series A round, Fortune is the first to report. This time—despite a still-difficult fundraising landscape—the responses they heard were different, from enthusiasm about the category estimated at $17 billion globally to an acknowledgment of Alloy's competitors. "The conversation had much changed," Fulenwider says. Kairos HQ led the Series A round, which also included participants PACE Healthcare Capital, Emmeline Ventures, and Amboy Street Ventures.
Fulenwider and Molenaar were inspired to found their company by Molenaar's experience entering surgical menopause at age 40 after she had her ovaries removed following a diagnosis with the BRCA gene. Molenaar had tried her hand at entrepreneurship before, while Fulenwider pivoted from a career as the editor-in-chief of Marie Claire. They tapped as Alloy's chief medical advisor Sharon Malone, a women's health expert and friend of Michelle Obama who they heard on the former first lady's podcast.
They've taken a slow-and-steady approach to growth and are profitable. "It was really great to be able to build such an efficient business model and figure out that we could do this and become profitable without raising a whole bunch of money," Fulenwider says. The Alloy platform offers asynchronous treatment by doctors, with a $50 annual fee and prescriptions starting at $40 a month. The founders decided not to accept insurance, aiming for ease of access and price transparency instead.
Some other menopause startups have taken a flashier approach; Joanna Strober's Midi, for example, recently added a cohort of celebrities including Amy Schumer and Connie Britton to its cap table and has raised $103 million.
While Alloy has had a judicious strategy so far, the founders are interested in entering growth mode a bit more with this capital, expanding from treating acute menopause symptoms to offering products across hair, skin, and sexual wellness categories for women in midlife. The startup right now has 28 full-time employees and has about two dozen doctors on its platform.
The menopause category often gets lumped together as everything from science-driven companies to digital health businesses to beauty and wellness brands. "There are always people who are going to be out there trying to sell people expensive stuff that doesn't work," Fulenwider says. "All of the new menopause companies that are doing similar things to what we're doing, if we all counted all of our customers—we still haven't reached remote market penetration of even the women who are looking for help."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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