Every Monday we share a quick “best of” from the week that was with our Inner Circle members. What’s trending in the Femtech Insider community and beyond? We’ve got you covered! In this week's brief get an overview of last month's femtech investments , plus...
- Contraline and the Rise of 'Male Contraceptives'
- The Hims Story
Femtech Investments: October 2021
As every month we share an overview of all the fundraising news we covered on Femtech Insider with our Inner Circle audience and when looking at the deals right now, one thing becomes clear: Hormonal Health is trending and rightfully so!
Check out our October 2021 Investment Round-uphere or visit our Investment Round-up Archive in the Inner Circle Member Hub.
Male Contraceptives and Reproductive Autonomy
This week Contraline made the news with a $10.7M Series A and plans to take its male contraceptive ADAM into clinical trials and we wanted to take the opportunity today to share some context on why and how this is relevant to women's health.
Why it matters
The lack of male birth control options puts an undue burden on women to shoulder the responsibility of managing family planning goals. This lack also contributes to the global unintended pregnancy rate, currently more than 120 million globally each year. The global human population is already unsustainable and it continues to grow annually. By providing men with more contraceptive options, we can meaningfully improve relationship and family dynamics, sustainability, global health, and much more. This is not just our opinion either: it is overwhelmingly supported by research data.
(Source: Male Contraceptive Alliance)
How it works
Male fertility can be reversibly inhibited through multiple approaches, and each target area could yield contraceptives with different characteristics. Below is an overview of the different categories. If you'd like to learn more, you can access primers on all of them by the Male Contraceptive Initiative here.
- Spermatogenesis is the creation of mature sperm from germ cells, and presents unique opportunities with respect to male methods of contraception
- Sperm Transport. Preventing sperm from being transported out of the reproductive tract is the basis of vasectomy, one of the only existing forms of male contraception, and the ability to reversibly block this process represents huge potential for new, additional male contraceptives.
- Sperm Motility. One key feature of sperm is their ability to swim through the reproductive tract. This ability, or sperm motility, is one of the most exciting targets of male contraception. This prime provides additional details.
- Fertilization is the joining of human egg and sperm to create a zygote, and is a prime target for male contraception because of its place as the last step in the reproductive chain. Learn more in this primer.
👉 To learn more visit the website of the Male Contraceptive Alliance.
The Hims Story aka The Soft Sell
We spotted this New Yorker long-form article on the beginnings of Hims in the Health Tech Nerds Community this week and thought we'd share with you as well!
Health Tech Nerds: "This is a fascinating deep dive in the New Yorker on Hims and how it built a brand hyper-targeted at "The Hims Man" who "could could order sildenafil while waiting in line for Sweetgreen, changing in the Equinox locker room, obtaining knitwear on Mr Porter." It highlights how Hims got its start - in venture studio Atomic, which saw an opportunity at the intersection of: 1. regulatory changes around telehealth and 2. viagra and rogaine going off patent. The launched a landing page around the idea, and saw massive interest. Hims CEO articulates a broad vision for the company - one where Hims is used for everything but emergencies. It's worth reading if you're interested in the D2C space and curious how it will all play out."
👉 The Soft Sell: The health-care brand Hims wants to leverage young men's anxiety over erections and hair loss into a multibillion-dollar empire Read it now
👉For context we also recommend reading Rachel Braun Scherl's Medium article titled: What If Hims Had Been Born Hers...?
