This month at January Ventures: Oula Health adds $28M in Series B funding, Elektra Health raises $3.3M seed round, celebrating women in the January portfolio and community for IWD 2024, and more!
Highlights:
Oula Health, a maternity care clinic that combines obstetrics and midwifery care using its technology-enabled and hybrid care approach, has raised a $28M Series B round from Revolution, Maverick and Google Ventures. Early investors included Chelsea Clinton's fund Metrodora, January Ventures, the Collaborative Fund, Female Founders Fund, and 8VC.
This new funding round will further fuel Oula’s mission of building a better experience for patients in their reproductive years by expanding its care approach to more markets beyond New York City.
Elektra Health, a digital care platform focused on providing menopause care, has raised a $3.3M seed round led by UPMC Enterprises. Co-founded by Jannine Versi and Alessandra Henderson, Elektra Health hopes to bridge the menopause care gap via a comprehensive care model. This round will be used to expand the company’s care delivery platform.
Vault Platform has been shortlisted to win Best Conduct Risk Solution for the RegTech Insight Awards Europe 2024. According to the organizers, “the awards recognize both established providers and innovative newcomers providing RegTech solutions that have successfully improved firms’ ability to effectively respond to evolving and ever more complex regulatory requirements across the global financial services industry.”
January Ventures Community Spotlight:
In honor of International Women’s Day 2024, we celebrated some of the women in the January portfolio and operator network - cheers to their accomplishments this past year!
🎉 Sasha Haco, CEO and co-founder of Unitary AI: Unitary closed a $15M Series A and was named #1 Startup in the UK.
🎉 Sonia Kastner, CEO and Founder of Pano AI: Pano AI closed $17M in Series A funding and Sonia was named to BBC’s 100 Women List.
🎉 Elaine Purcell and Adrianne Nickerson, co-founders of Oula Health: Oula Health closed a $28M Series B funding round.
🎉 Erika Hairston and Arnelle Ansong, co-founders of Edlfyt: Edlyft’s AI Tutor was acquired by Google to make computer science knowledge more accessible to users.
🎉 Dimple Patel, CEO of NatureMetrics: At the end of 2023, Dimple Patel started her new role as CEO of NatureMetircs.
🎉 Alessandra Henderson and Jannine Versi, co-founders of Elektra Health: Elektra Health announced a $3.3M seed round led by UPMC Enterprises.
🎉 Charlotte Guzzo, co-founder and COO of Sano Genetics: Sano Genetics won a prestigious £330K Innovate UK Grant and closed a $11.4 million round in scale-up funding led by Plural.
🎉 Anita Hossain Choudhry and Rei Wang, co-founders of The Grand World: The Grand closed $4.7M in seed funding in a round led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six and was leveraged by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Angel City Football Club.
🎉 Julia Collins, founder of Planet FWD: Planet FWD launched “the first end-to-end climate solution for the food & beverage industry”.
🎉 Caroline Grey, CRO and co-founder of Treefera: Treefera launched their platform that easily integrates with clients through an API and accelerates the carbon offset process bringing transparency, accuracy, and trust to projects.
Firm news:
January Ventures was named to the DEIC Power100 list by Blueprint Capital Advisors LLC. This list honors “established alternative asset management players and disruptive new entrants.” It is a first-of-its-kind distinction that recognizes those who are delivering opportunities while pivoting the industry towards inclusive capitalism.
Journey to Lead announced its 2024-25 class of JOURNEY Fellows with January’s Jennifer Neundorfer and Planet FWD’s Julia Collins on this year’s list. The group of 26 innovators will receive help from Journey to Lead to help scale as they tackle the most critical societal challenges.
In honor of Women’s History Month, Work-Bench, enterprise seed investors, highlighted January Ventures among 6 other funds led by women and Venture Forward named Jennifer to their list of 10 Emerging VC Fund Managers to Watch.
Portfolio Wins:
Aavia, a daily tracker app that helps users understand how hormones impact their lives, has been accepted into the Mayo Clinic and ASU MedTech Accelerator. The accelerator “provides emerging companies with a multiday immersive curriculum in health care entrepreneurship” and provides hands-on experience via a two-week curriculum and ongoing access to support and networks.
Sorcero, aimed at pairing AI with saving and improving patient lives, released its Instant Insights Engine, which “removes friction from search and analysis across sources, time, teams, and geographies so Medical Affairs teams can make full use of their data.”
In 2020, Sano Genetics embarked on a three-year-long observational study aimed at unraveling the genetic underpinnings of long COVID and partnered with a top-ten pharmaceutical company. You can read the results here.
Food for Thought:
January Ventures held a portfolio workshop with Rachel Kim, a communications & marketing executive and member of our Operator Network, on how to use owned PR channels to help startups stand out and increase brand awareness. You can see Rachel’s recap of the event here.
“While female founders still hold a relatively small portion of the total funding landscape, that portion is a growing one.” Sifted shares five charts on how female founders and VCs fared in 2023.
“Investing Lessons from 27 Years and Countless IPOs”: 20-Minute VC interviews Peter Wagner, founding partner of Wing, the biggest lessons from 27 years in venture, what’s in store for defense and climate startups, and more.
“How to Know if Your Idea’s the Right One” — A Founder’s Guide for Successful Early-Stage Customer Discovery
Charles Hudson, Founder and Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures and a guest on Season Two of Beyond the Cap Table, and Aliya Lakhani, PhD Candidate at UCLA, share their thoughts on the changing nature of pre-seed syndication.
Where we were and where we will be:
Jen was a judge at the 2nd annual Female Founder Pitch Competition at the Harvard Business School's WSA conference. The competition sought to “highlight female founders and entrepreneurs in the Harvard ecosystem and connect them to fellow founders, investors, and advisors.”
Jen was named one of the 2024 honorees at the Smart Business Dealmakers Conference which took place on March 7th. The event recognizes Boston-based leaders across asset classes who have done the most meaningful and impactful deals.
Maren will be speaking at Tech.eu Summit London 2024, taking place May 16-17. Please make sure to say, “Hi,” if you’ll be there.