Midi creates a digital platform for the often overlooked area of ​​women’s health

When Joanna Strober was about 47 years old, she stopped sleeping. Although sleep loss is a common symptom of perimenopause, she first needed to go to multiple doctors, similar to driving 45 minutes from San Francisco to pay $750 out of pocket, to get a diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

“That feeling of ‘wow, I’ve really suffered unnecessarily over the last year’ really stuck with me,” Strober said in a recent episode of Podcast Found on TechCrunch. “I started talking to all my friends and trying to understand what was happening to them, and it became clear that perimenopause and menopause were serious. This hits women like a pile of bricks. It has many different symptoms and very few providers are trained to care for this population.”

This realization inspired Strober to launch Midi Health, a telehealth platform designed to serve midlife women by connecting them with healthcare providers trained in the symptoms and coverings of perimenopause and menopause.

Despite her “aha” moment, Strober explained why she couldn’t launch her startup instantly. She said Midi would not have existed if the U.S. government hadn’t modified regulations around telehealth and access to care during the pandemic. Strober said that because of changes in digital health, the company was capable of launch a platform that gives women with care as a substitute of having to depend on in-person care.

“It was a very exciting discovery to understand that this problem, which has existed for a long time, could finally be solved through telehealth,” Strober said. “And that’s why I wanted to start this company.”

Strober said Midi operates a little in another way than many other digital health firms which have sprung up in the wake of the pandemic. She said Midi was not created as a digital avenue through which users could get one-off care or treatment as quickly as possible, like many other firms of the same era, but relatively as a platform where women built long-term relationships with women. suppliers who make them feel noticed.

This approach can also be why Strober believes Midi has been capable of proceed to grow and lift VC funding as VCs have lost interest in the category. The company recently raised a $60 million B round led by Emerson Collective, with participation from Google Ventures, SteelSky Ventures and Muse Capital, amongst others. This round brings the company’s total funding to $99 million.

According to. digital health startups raised $13.2 billion globally in 2023 CB Insights data. This represents a decline of 48% in comparison with 2022, to $25.5 billion, and a decline of 75% in comparison with 2021, when a record amount of $52.7 billion was invested.

“I think too few telehealth companies haven’t thought about long-term customer relationships,” Strober said. “We see ourselves as constructing a trustworthy brand in the healthcare industry. Our brand is due to this fact skilled women’s care. We have to offer you such amazing care that you’ll come back to us repeatedly. That’s what women do.”

Midi shouldn’t be Strober’s first digital health startup, and she or he shared how her past experience constructing Kurbo Health, a startup focused on childhood obesity before digital health even existed, influenced her decisions to construct Midi. She also shared how her previous life as a enterprise capitalist also played a role in her approach to business.

With this latest round of funding, Midi looks forward to expanding care in areas covered by perimenopause and menopause, including sexual well-being, hair and skincare, and testosterone access.

“People keep asking, when do you get out of perimenopause and menopause?” Strober said. “But perimenopause and menopause are a big market. So we’re working a lot to understand what women’s health needs are at this time in their lives and how we can address those concerns appropriately.”