Welcome to our #136 weekly newsletter.
“For women taking control of their financial future”
-Jana Hlistova
From The Purse
In this week’s newsletter, we highlight Amboy Street Ventures’ investment in Hey Jane, which prescribes abortion medication to patients online, delivers the medication to the home, and provides follow-up care and community.
This oversubscribed investment round of $6.1m is believed to be a turning point for abortion access innovation.
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And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
Until next week,
Jana
Amboy Street Ventures invests in leading virtual abortion provider, Hey Jane
This oversubscribed round is a turning point for abortion access innovation.
Amboy Street Ventures has recently invested in Hey Jane, which prescribes abortion medication to patients online, delivers the medication to the home, and provides follow-up care and community, as reported on Amboy Street’s blog.
Hey Jane has raised $6.1m with participation from other female founded VC funds including Ulu Ventures, The Helm, Portfolia, and G9.
While so many companies shy away from what is often considered a ‘politicised’ space, Hey Jane is focused on providing necessary, accessible, convenient, and safe solutions for women, and has created an extremely loyal customer base as a result.
In June of this year, the US Supreme Court overturned…
… the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that protects the right to an abortion.
Abortion will now likely be prohibited in twenty-six states, forcing women to:
a) travel hundreds of miles across state lines to the nearest clinic and risk prosecution upon returning, b) self-administer abortion procedures or c) seek illegal abortions in their home states.
It is often quoted that ‘overturning Roe v. Wade does not stop abortions, it stops safe abortions’.
One in four women will have an abortion by age 45…
…and even for the remainder who don’t, this is about women having the freedom to make their own choices about their body.
And yet abortion continues to be underfunded.
Despite significant capital going to non-profit organisations, the for-profit investment world has tended to avoid it altogether. Even some of the most progressive VC funds will not invest in abortion related startups due to restrictions from their fund investors, as per the Amboy Street blog.
According to Kiki Freedman, Co-founder and CEO of Hey Jane, interviewed on Forbes: ‘…abortion is too difficult to get logistically, financially, and from a stigma and emotional perspective. That’s why we provide fast, affordable abortion care from home..’.
And these abortions are equally spread across all party lines, so this is a health issue not a political one.
Since its inception in 2021, Hey Jane…
…quickly scaled to serve nearly 20,000 patients and plans to expand into other stigmatised areas of women’s health, starting with post-partum depression.
Even before the overturning of Roe vs Wade, Hey Jane saw customer growth increase by 300% between Q1 and Q2 in 2021.
They have a 3 pillar approach to care…physical, social, and emotional:
Physical: $249 for treatment, with financial assistance available
Social: creating a safe online space for this community (is really critical)
Emotional: patients can chat with a caring doctor within 24 hours of contact, and medications are shipped daily.
Whilst VCs have historically stayed away from this space..
…this oversubscribed $6.1m round in Hey Jane is a turning point. VCs are starting to fuel the abortion access innovation space.
Female founded VCs which also tend to attract…
… more female investors are starting to create a flywheel of interest and capital aimed at these underfunded and often underestimated markets.
We are also seeing more high profile female investors such as Reese Wetherspoon, Serena Williams and Oprah Winfrey back female founded startups as well as starting their own.
These celebrity female investors are often high signal for the VC market, providing credibility and endorsement in categories often ignored by the mostly white male investor.
Women with capital to invest are starting to drive the investment ecoystem in ways we have not seen before. And women (and men) everywhere stand to benefit.
What next?
#66: How more women can invest in female-led startups with Gillian Fleming
#69: Women as decision makers and asset allocators with Patience Marime-Ball and Ruth Shaber MD
#71: Investing in women’s reproductive and maternal health with Ruth Shaber MD
News in Brief
Financial news
The S&P 500 is up 4.7% this week. However it’s a violently flat stock market—and investors shouldn’t mistake the recent rally for anything more than a welcome respite in what has been a very uncomfortable journey.
Pound rises over $1.13 and stock market closes higher as the UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss resigns.
Interest rates unlikely to rise above 5%, says Bank of England official. Ben Broadbent says increase already priced into markets would deliver ‘pretty material’ hit to economy.
Investors are betting the BoE to raise interest rates by 0.75-points to 3%. This is down from (an exepcted) 1% increase before Truss resigned.
Rising food prices pushed UK inflation to 10.1% in September, well above the Bank of England’s 2% target.
Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi & NFTs
Bitcoin lingers under the $20,000 for the longest stretch since late 2020. And bitcoin is now less volatile than the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq since 2020.
Fidelity to roll out Ethereum trading for institutions next week. Fidelity will officially make Ethereum—the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap—available to its customers on October 28.
The Ethereum staking rewards rise with leveraged stakers seeing 11% APR. The main cause for the rising yield is increased network activity, specifically in ways that result in higher fees for network validators.
Solana Founder: “we’re more complementary to ethereum than killer”. Solana is a popular blockchain for dapps and non-fungible tokens or NFTs due to its fast transaction speed. “That opens up the space to a decentralised network optimised for consensus at the speed of light..”
Coffee Break? Read This
UK childcare is collapsing – and forcing mothers back into the home
Almost 8m people in UK struggling to pay bills, says City watchdog
We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with Jana via the The Purse website or tweet @jointhepurse and @janicka.
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