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Provider upskilling startup Mate Fertility secured $5.2 million in Series A funds, the company tells Erin exclusively. 

Why it matters: The company trains OB-GYNs in so-called fertility deserts to provide fertility services typically performed only by specialists known as reproductive endocrinologists (REIs).

Details: Led by Struck Capital, the round brings total company financing to $8 million.

Cortado Ventures, Oklahoma Life Sciences Fund and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund joined alongside Vituity Health, What If Ventures, Spectra Asala/B-Side Ventures, Asymmetry Ventures, The Council, The Henry Collective, Gaingels and Bay Bridge Ventures.

Individual backers including Innovative Health Diagnostics CEO David White, Orchid CEO Noor Siddiqui, and Parallel Health CEO Natalise Kalea Robinson also participated.

Among the participants, 60% of backers in the round were women, 29% were LGBTQ+ and 30% were Black, Indigenous and people of color.

Funds will go toward hiring more clinicians, marketing and opening future clinics in Pittsburgh and Northern Virginia.

What's next: CEO Traci Keen foresees the company raising a Series B in roughly 18 months.

How it works: The Los Angeles-based company trains OB-GYNs located in areas with few REIs to offer services including egg retrievals and embryology services.

Those providers pay Mate a fee for the training; Mate takes a percentage of their clinic's top-line revenues.

"The retrieval is really the key piece of the skill that’s being acquired here," says Keen. "We’re not saying [OB-GYNs] should be doing this without REI supervision. We’re saying let's take data and use that to oversee what these providers are doing."

By the numbers: At Mate's flagship clinic in Oklahoma City, which opened in 2021, the average patient age is 31 (people with complex conditions such as ovarian cancer or advanced endometriosis are referred elsewhere).

The OB-GYNs there have conducted 219 procedures (OB-GYNs perform their first 20 egg retrievals with an REI present).

The intrigue: Struck Capital managing partner Adam Struck says Mate's biggest headwind is pushback from REIs.

"We're in a sense taking market share from them and giving it to OB-GYNs — similar to what Uber did for Taxi medallions," Struck says.

Co-founder Gabriel Bogner acknowledges the challenge but says it's improving.

"When we started there was some friction in the space with that," Bogner says. "We’re not trying to steal anyone else’s piece of the pie. We're trying to make a bigger pie."

1 big thing: Mate Fertility closes $5M Series A

Lifeforce, a membership-based wellness platform, raised a $12 million Series A, CEO Dugal Bain-Kim tells Aaron exclusively.

Why it's the BFD: Lifeforce aims to use fresh funds to develop partnerships with health care providers and wearable makers.

Details: The oversubscribed round was co-led by Peterson Ventures and M13 and also saw participation by Ridgeline Ventures, Rosecliff Ventures and Seaside Ventures.

The company is also backed by co-founder and motivational speaker Tony Robbins, Peter Diamandis, Serena Williams and Scottie Upshall.

What's next: The Santa Monica, California-based company believes that the latest capital will get Lifeforce through the next 24 months.

"If all goes well, we will be in charge of our own destiny at that point and will do another raise then, but we are on a good trajectory," says Dugal Bain-Kim, co-founder and CEO.

How it works: Lifeforce provides members with at-home diagnostics, access to functional medicine physicians, certified health coaches, and data-driven personalized care plans.

Lifeforce offers its memberships direct to consumers online. The memberships include in-home quarterly biomarker testing, expert clinical support, and unlimited health coaching all to help optimize health.

Lifeforce also sells premium nutraceuticals to support a consumer’s personal health journey without membership through its website.

Members get a customized digital dashboard that will include test results and additional information to help streamline and guide members.

Expert clinical support and useful health tools and information are delivered directly to members on an ongoing basis.

Meanwhile, a personalized plan inclusive of specific physical routines, supplement regimens, and body tracking indices with clinical insights from the Lifeforce network of medical professionals and physicians.

"There is a lot of spray and pray in health and wellness without proper data," says Bain-Kim. "Our goal is to move away from a guessing game with more precise data."

The platform collects members' health data every three months — and Lifeforce wants to invest in infrastructure to link those data points with patient records, Dugal Bain-Kim says.

"We have a proactive data set," he says. "Now we need to build the tech to be better programs, as we grow and get closer to the next series of fundraising."

Flashback: Raising capital wasn't easy, given the macro environment, Dugal Bain-Kim says.

"Diligence was rigorous and it took a month or two longer than it would have taken in 2022, as people thought longer and deeper," he says.

Yes, but: The CEO says Lifeforce's preventive care pitch was attractive.

"In the end, more folks wanted to get in than we could let in," he says.

"Over 50% of health care is VBC now, as structural incentives are clicking into place and preventive care will get rewarded," he adds

The big picture: Industry stakeholders are divided on whether wellness data can truly move the needle for value-based care.

The potential for longitudinal patient data is where consumer-focused and provider-led health care management merge, said Amy McDonough, general manager at Google's Fitbit Health Solutions, at an Axios BFD roundtable earlier this month. 

2. The BFD: Lifeforce hauls in $12M Series A

Illustration of a price tag in the shape of a red cross

• Thomas H. Lee Partners-backed health data enablement company Intelligent Medical Objects acquired artificial intelligence-fueled health care provider Melax Technologies. https://axios.link/3Wru0qs 

• GTCR, a private equity firm, closed GTCR Fund XIV, with aggregate commitments of $11.5 billion. https://axios.link/431Yge0 

3. Deals o' the day

• Permira appointed former global president of DePuy Orthopaedics David Floyd as a senior adviser to its global health care group. 

• Avalon Healthcare Solutions named former Sidekick Health exec Pamela Stahl president.

• Reverba appointed former Thornberry CEO Peter Brown president.

• ATF Medical appointed Abbi Akstulewicz to the newly created position of director of payer partnerships

4.  It's Personnel

😓 "Worse than what we thought": New data reveals deeper problems with the Bureau of Prisons’ Covid response — STAT

💰 Dems think twice about clawing back COVID-19 funds for debt limit — Axios Pro Health Policy 

❌ CVS’ shuttered clinical trials business doesn’t mean decentralized models are doomed, exec says — MedCity News

💊 Did scientists accidentally invent an anti-addiction drug? — The Atlantic

5.  Your daily dose

Illustration of a weekly pill dispenser box with a newspaper called "daily dose" in each compartment.

🎵 Claire is still riding high after seeing Caroline Polachek perform in Chicago last week.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to newsletter editor Claire Rychlewski and copy editor Mickey Meece. Please ask your colleagues, friends, family and cycling buddies to sign up.

May 23, 2023

1 big thing: Mate Fertility closes $5M Series A