Q1 2023 Featured Founders

Top 10 New Majority founders currently fundraising from YOU

Hello New Majority Investor Circle!

Q1 has flown by and we are excited to share with you the top 10 New Majority founders who are currently raising from everyday investors like YOU. We hope you love the new format which aims to make it easy to skim and quickly understand who the company is, how it makes money, where it sits in the market, and potential impact.

We’d like to hear from you! Let us know which startups you loved and which ones left you on the fence.

Heads up - one campaign ends today!

As a reminder, Investor Circle members get access to the full top 10 list. Free subscribers see the top 3. We’ve also included a few bonus tidbits for accredited investors at the bottom of the list. These are founders who would love to see New Majority investors on their cap table and are actively raising pre-seed and seed rounds today.

Bibti

First, some context:

• How many news reports do we see about women running in the park and they are attacked? Walking home and followed?

• Who is this for?

  • 📱💬 You're the friend that reminds everyone to text the group chat when they get home

  • 🚌 🚕 You factor in how you think you're getting home/traveling that night when you make plans

  • 🔑 You carry keys between your knuckles when you're out alone

• Bibti is the “buddy system” scaled as a mobile app to increase safety in female public transportation use, starting in urban areas 👯‍♀️

Tell me more

Bibti is a B2G (cities) and subscription-based app that helps women connect with other women for safe transportation, building a safe, trusted, and fun community in the process.

The details

• Industry: Tech, community, micromobility 🚶‍♀️

• Impact: Gender equality (SDG 5), Sustainable cities & communities (SDG 11)

• Team Diversity: Female founders

• HQ: Washington, DC

• Company size: <5

• Year founded: 2021

• Key investors: Grants & founder-funded to date

• Investment type: Crowd SAFE

• Deadline: None stated

• Investor Perks: Ranges from t-shirts to launch party invitations to access to quarterly investor meetings

• Early traction: Launched MVP and gained 86 users within the first 90 days with $200 in marketing spent, Georgetown Leonsis Family Entrepreneurship Prize winner (also known as Bark Tank), Georgetown Global Impact Pitch Competition winner, Georgetown Global Social Innovation Lab winner

Founders

• Emily Owen: Georgetown School of Foreign Service graduate, lived in Cairo and Istanbul for 7 years

• Sena Ikiz: lives in Istanbul (2nd city slated to launch), product manager with built environment experience

Due diligence

Pros:

• 👩‍👩‍👧‍👧 Community building: for college students, it feels safe to be with peers. 17% month on month growth during the pilot at Georgetown University 🎓

• 🚶‍♀️ In line with microbility and sustainable trends: Sustainable (currently walking-based and will expand to public transportation)

• ✅ Focus on personal safety: Verification based on ID and community-based

• 💰 Multiple revenue streams: subscription model for users and municipal city contracts

Potential risks:

• 🌍 Growth plan is built on scalability to international cities which means the app has to work across different cultures, languages, and geographies

• Privacy and safety concerns: Core driver of users to the platform

Competitors

• SafeUp: available in 10 cities, allows users to see vetted “Guardians” around them and connect via video or phone if feeling unsafe, raised $715K

• Sister:allows users to share locations and activate alarms

• Wher: based in Italy, allows users to mark streets as safe or friendly for other women

• Guardial: pre-launch, allows users to simulate calls, send location to emergency contacts, and record audio and video with one tap

Why Bibti: Most personal safety apps for women focus on deterrence and sending alerts while leaving users physically alone, whereas Bibti is connecting personal safety with public transportation leveraging existing infrastructure to actually bring women together - literally safety in numbers.

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Pollie

First, some context:

• You’ve noticed some changes within your body and are concerned it’s a broader health issue:

  • 🩸 Your period is erratic, and yes, we just emerged from a pandemic and you were recently laid off, but you think it’s something beyond stress

  • 😡 Your normally clear skin looks like it did when you were a teenager

  • 🪒 In addition to shaving your legs, you have started to shave new hair patches on your stomach, chest, and back

  • 🧴 Even though you just bought another new moisturizer, you can’t seem to get rid of the darker, thicker skin patch that appeared on the back of your neck

  • 😖 After a year of doctor visits, you continue to get a recommendation for stress reduction

• Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is often misdiagnosed as its a collection of symptoms with no "single test to diagnose”

• 🙇‍♀️ 7M people within the US suffer from PCOS

• PCOS costs $2k - 13k/year, and the status quo of discrete and reactive PCOS care fails to tackle the whole disease

• Pollie redefines PCOS care in one mobile app with personalized, OBGYN-backed, and evidence-based PCOS care

  

Tell me more

Pollie is an app for women providing personalized, research-backed, and OBGYN-approved interventions to help you manage your hormones, metabolism, reproductive health, and emotional wellbeing across all life stages. Pollie focuses on complex, chronic conditions women face - that are underfunded, not well understood, and often misdiagnosed.

The details

• Industry: Tech, wellness 🩺

• Impact: Good health and well-being (SDG 3) & Gender equality (SDG 5)

• Team Diversity: Female founders

• HQ: Denver, CO

• Company size: 4

• Year founded: 2020

• Key investors: Raised nearly $900K from angel, institutional, and corporate investors (Bayer’s G4A, HealthTech Capital, Joyance Partners, Social Starts)

• Investment type: Crowd SAFE

• Deadline: May 1, 2023

• Investor Perks: Ranges from sponsoring 1 person’s participation in PCOS program for 3 months to an advisory role (min investment of $50K)

• Early traction:

  • revenue generating ($89 / month and HSA and FSA reimbursable)

  • 📈 83% of Pollie members report feeling better after 2 months

  • 45% daily active users / monthly active user ratio (over 50% is stellar)

Founders

• Jane Sagui: Co-founder & CEO, diagnosed with PCOS in college, previously at VC/PE firm NGP Capital and PwC

• Sabrina Mason: Co-founder & COO, MPH, previously at Tempus, athenahealth, and Boston Children's Hospital

Due diligence

Pros:

• 🍎👩‍⚕️📚 Comprehensive focus: Help women manage PCOS symptoms through a comprehensive product that includes labs, a care team, a PCOS plan, an education library, symptom tracking, and supplements

• Comprehensive focus that applies to broader market of complex, chronic conditions for females: $96B market including hormone, autoimmune, digestive, and thyroid disease

• 👍 Focused on behavior change: complements existing health care infrastructure and an approach with demonstrated individual and commercial success

• 👌 Organic growth: with no paid advertising, they had ~1000 app downloads and over 80% of members seeing improvement and over 95% expressing satisfaction with Pollie care team visits

Potential risks:

• 📲 App relies on user engagement and consistent tracking of symptoms making UI and design a big key to success and neither have that experience

• 📑 Current fundraising round is to expand users and conduct a study to demonstrate clinical effectiveness: study may show insignificant results

• Large and competitive market: as Jane, the founder, points out herself, there are significant competitors in the virtual, behavior change, chronic conditions healthcare startup and incumbent space.

Competitors

• Allara: all-in-one virtual care team providing personalized healthcare for hormonal, metabolic and gynecological conditions

• Paloma: focused on end to end thyroid care through testing, consultations with thyroid doctors, and nutritional guidance with constant check-ins for a continuous supervision approach

• Livongo: focused on managing diabetes with smart devices and 24/7 expert support

• Omada: virtual chronic care provider focused on prediabetes, diabetes, hypertension, and muskuloskeletal

Why Pollie: Unlike many competitors Pollie combines behavior change with consultations. Pollie starts with behavior change, actions that a patient can take today, and complements these actions with data, physician consultations, evidence-based care suggestions to create a comprehensive care approach focused on immediate relief and sustained management of disease. If Pollie can succeed with PCOS, a notoriously difficult to diagnose and manage disease, then this bodes well for tackling other complex, chronic conditions.

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The Cru

First, some context:

• Are you?

  • A) 😵‍💫 Burned out, working in a toxic work environment, but have been promoted a few times, and now you’re not sure if you want to stay as you’re already on track for the next promotion or jump to a different company with a better, healthier balance

  • B) 👭 Have the itch to launch your own business but want a partner in crime to take the leap with you

  • C) 🤑 First generation to go to college, secured a prestigious, well-paid job, but…no clue what to do with your high income and how to actually achieve financial freedom

• Women need meaningful connections in a constantly changing world that seems to throw one curveball after another…pandemic, working from home with young children, social media fatigue, Roe vs. Wade overturned, need I say more?

• At work, "women in the middle" struggle to navigate their middle career direction; 4 in 10 women considered leaving their companies in 2021.

• HR leaders frequently fail at retaining the necessary pipeline for women senior leaders due to job stress, limited time, and budget

• The Cru provides an affordable and structured solution to help women in the middle connect with like-minded peers in a diversified network.

Tell me more

The Cru is a platform to help women meet their life goals and help companies retain women by matching individuals in small accountability circles for mutual peer coaching.

The details

• Industry: Tech, HR

• Impact: Gender equality (SDG 5) & Reduced inequalities (SDG 10)

• Team Diversity: Black, woman founder

• HQ: NY, NY

• Company size: 5

• Year founded: 2018

• Key investors: Raised $5M from VCs, including Betaworks, Bloomberg Beta & Fearless Fund

• Investment type: Crowd SAFE

• Deadline: May 1, 2023

• Investor Perks: A membership to The Cru or a virtual keynote by the founder at the company event depending on investment amount

• Early traction:

  • $8M pipeline from 16,000 applicants, $696K ARR, 91% retention

  • 92% of members feel The Cru has helped them to realize their intentions

Founders

• Tiffany Dufu: CEO and founder, prev. President of White House Project, Launch team for Lean In, CLO (Chief Leadership Officer) of Levo, author of NYT bestselling book Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less, pillar behind Girls Who Code, Girl Scouts USA & Visible Figures

Due diligence

Pros:

• 👩‍💼 A meaningful and on-demand program that helps unleash women's potential, promotes DEI, and advances women to higher leadership positions in the workplace

• A huge market opportunity that remains to be tapped into: TAM for “women in the middle” is $23B, with an expected buying power market of $5T.

• ⚽️ High-level leaders are coaches with the help of an effective 2-sided model to improve odds of members' success.

Potential risks:

• Scalability of the 2-side model requires knowledge of data management and technology integration that current leadership has no experience on.

• Cyber security threats, breaches of sensitive, and confidential information.

Competitors

• Pavilion: a community-powered learning for high-growth leaders

• Uvaro: a community-based Career Success company that offers lifelong support to experience both financial health and fulfillment from work.

• Chief: private membership network connecting and supporting women executive leaders

Why The Cru: In a world where progress for equality has stalled, women are willing to pay to build meaningful connections that further their careers. Companies are increasingly willing to pay to retain their pipeline of women leaders. The Cru offers a structured and cost-effective solution for women in the middle to connect with peers who share similar interests within a diverse network.