Our Investment in Maven Clinic: A Milestone for Maternal and Family Health

Today we announce our investment in?Maven Clinic, whose Series D financing Lux is honored to co-lead along with Dragoneer, with participation from BOND and Sequoia Capital, Oak HC/FT, and Icon Ventures. With this funding, Maven becomes the first unicorn in women’s and family health — and ideally not the last.

It’s no secret that I’m a big believer in the massive opportunity for innovation and investment in women’s and family health. I’ve?written?and?spoken?about our thesis in the space, and we have invested in transformative technologies taking on everything from?personalized birth control?to?advanced AI for IVF.

Let’s be clear: any parent or caregiver — regardless of gender — must draw on reserves of heroic proportions to navigate through the current health crisis, economic fallout, and the many other hurdles that the pandemic has precipitated. These compounded challenges, especially for?mothers?and?families of color, are extraordinary — from the burnout of daily childcare to more existential anxieties around health, housing and food security.?The?New York Times?has called the pandemic a?“mental health crisis for parents,” resulting in a “primal scream” from mothers, a generation of whom could be “scarred.” And while the impetus to innovate in women’s and family health is not unique to the time of COVID, the pandemic has shed light on the failings of our fragmented, labyrinthine healthcare system for families and the untapped opportunities in the?$648B care economy. From economies facing?falling birth rates?to the?stark attrition of women from the workforce, stakeholders across the board are eager for a better and more comprehensive solution to family care.

Maven’s founder and CEO, Kate Ryder — a former journalist and mother who had her third child during the pandemic — started the digital health company in 2014 after witnessing firsthand these gaps in care, from fertility through pregnancy and parenting. She is one of the most impressive CEOs we’ve met, scaling her company over the last few months with a newborn in tow, recovering from an emergency c-section, all the while co-parenting two other toddlers.

We’ve had the opportunity to get to know Kate and Maven over the course of several years (during which she not only grew her business, but her family!) and have been awed by her leadership and by the quality and comprehensiveness of the Maven solution — as is evidenced by their happy customers. Maven has the largest and most diverse set of practitioners in the category–across 30 specialties and 350 subspecialties–and is the only platform that serves the full range of the parenthood journey in all its depth and diversity, meeting the financial, emotional, and physical challenges women and families face in their unique paths to parenthood. They have increased their enterprise membership 400% since the onset of COVID, bringing on four of the Fortune 15 as clients in the past year (including Microsoft) and offering an average of 130 different touch points per program.

In addition to our deep conviction in the growing market and investment opportunity, my passion for the space is also deeply personal. As a mother of two, I experienced high risk pregnancies with multiple complications, emergency c-sections, NICU stays, and breastfeeding challenges — all of which gave me direct insight into myriad challenges as a parent and a patient. And I was among the most fortunate in this world in terms of access to quality care and resources. It is no coincidence that I am joined on Maven’s Board of Directors by three other mothers (Jess Lee of Sequoia, Nancy Brown of Oak and Rachel Winokor), and a brand new father (Eric Jones of Dragoneer), whose personal journeys have also informed their professional conviction in the category. With significant traction, ROI, and demonstrated outcomes, Maven stands at the forefront of an industry at a critical inflection point..

While this financing is a major milestone for women’s and family health, it is still only the beginning. We are optimistic about what the future holds for the company — and most importantly, its potential to improve outcomes in population health, one family at a time.