Every Monday we share a quick “best of” from the week that was in the world of women’s health innovation with our Inner Circle members. What’s trending in the Femtech Insider community and beyond? Read on!
BIOMILQ's $21M Series A and the Somewhat Controversial Lab-Grown Breast Milk Opportunity'
Last week U.S.-based mammary biotech company BIOMILQ announced a $21M Series A to accelerate commercialization of its lab-grown breast milk. Asked about the raise BIOMILQ Co-founder & CEO Michelle Egger shared: “While we’re thrilled to announce an oversubscribed series A, we’re more excited about the value beyond capital being added around the table from our new investors. Each partner brings technical expertise, passion for human and planetary health, and belief in female founded ventures.”
But this belief in 'cultured breastmilk' is a somewhat controversial one as outlined in the Atlantic a while ago: "A Bold Controversial Idea for Making Breast Milk".
"The inconvenient truth about breastfeeding is that breasts are, invariably, attached to a person. A person who could get too sick to breastfeed. A person who might have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, because U.S. law does not mandate paid leave. A person who might have no place to pump at work, despite a law that does actually mandate such a room. For understandable and frustrating reasons, many mothers who want to breastfeed—who have internalized years of hearing “Breast is best”—simply cannot.
Enter: a bioreactor of lactating human breast cells.
The appeal of Biomilq is that it’s supposed to close the gap—that frustrating space between what mothers are expected to do and what most can realistically do."
💡 Read the Full Story on The Atlantic: A Bold and Controversial Idea for Making Breast Milk
👉 Startups to Watch
- BIOMILQ (U.S)
- Helaina (U.S)
- Turtle Tree Labs (Singapore)
VC for Good: Rhia Ventures' Grants in Support of Reproductive Rights in the U.S.
A couple of weeks ago we shared the news of Ovia Health's exit: "Labcorp, a leading global life sciences company has acquired Ovia Health, a digital health platform dedicated to family planning, pregnancy and parenting."
One of the funds invested in Ovia Health was Rhia Ventures, a U.S. based impact-fund, that has now announced in a statement by CEO Erika Seth Davies that they plan to use the income from the exit to make grants to several reproductive justice organizations:
These past few months have been filled with much turmoil, both in the world and the reproductive health ecosystem. SB 8, the new law that took effect in Texas on Tuesday, September 1, after the U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency appeal from abortion providers, directly violated the precedent established in the landmark 1973 case of Roe v. Wade. Rhia Ventures unequivocally supports our partners and other advocates who are fighting now to protect the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade and the networks of providers who are ensuring access to this vital health care.
We believe that abortion is health care and that people have the right to access the care they need under safe conditions that respect their privacy and dignity. This legislation will inflict untold harm upon pregnant people, with the harshest and most disproportionate impacts visited on those who are young, Black or Brown, immigrant, single parents, or earning a low income.
Rhia Ventures plans to use the income from the Ovia Health exit to make grants to several reproductive justice organizations in the South, specifically The Afiya Center and Sister Song. We are grateful for our partners, friends, supporters, and advocates in this work.
👉 Learn more about Rhia Ventures
👉 Learn more about Ovia Health's Exit to Labcorp
Go-To-Market Playbooks for Digital Health Startups
Spotted on the a16z Future blog: The New Path to Market for Digital Health
"Behind the current growth of the digital health market is a revolution in how digital health companies go-to-market. A wave of innovative companies are fundamentally re-envisioning what healthcare looks like, and it’s time that the GTM playbooks for digital health of yore be rewritten to acknowledge what’s happening in the current (and future) market."
The first post in this series, that was published this past week, explores how and why the go-to-market motion has changed for digital health: "Over the last 10 years, multiple generations of healthcare technology companies struggled to get lift-off, not because their products and services weren’t transformative, but because they failed to find an executable path for sustainable distribution and value capture. Distribution — arguably the most important driver of failure or success in the fast-growing digital health domain — was historically a very steep hill to climb. Some of that was simply due to the overall immaturity of the market and its inability (or resistance) to absorb and pay for novel, technology-based products that didn’t slot easily into existing budgets and care plans. Some of it was that companies lacked the capital to be able to survive long enterprise sales cycles that were the primary path for going to market."
💡 Follow the whole series dedicated to "The New Path to Market in Digital Health" here.
