Women’s health company Perelel announced on Wednesday that it is acquiring LOOM, a women’s education health platform, for an undisclosed sum. Erica Chidi, founder of LOOM, will join Perelel as a strategic advisor.
Chidi co-founded LOOM in 2017 as a one-person experience providing educational content about reproductive and sexual health education to women. By 2020, it had expanded into an online subscription digital platform, offering courses, content and community support for women. It has raised a total of $6.5 million from investors like Slow Ventures and Founders Fund, as well as celebrities like actress Tessa Thompson and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow.
“I was the 34th black woman to raise over a million dollars in venture capital,” Chidi recalled to TechCrunch, adding that she never expected to raise nearly $3 million in three months at the end of 2019. At the moment, there is renewed interest in women’s health.
Meanwhile, Alex Taylor, Dr. Banafshe Bayati and Victoria Thain Gioia launched Perelel in 2020 to provide clinically-based vitamins to support women’s hormonal health. The company said it has grown its product portfolio by 50% year-on-year, selling more than 48 million capsules since its launch, an overall growth of more than 120% year-on-year, but declined to disclose revenue. It closed a $6 million Series A in February led by Unilever.
The issue of women’s health has come into the sociopolitical spotlight over the past few years, especially since the Supreme Court struck down national access to abortion in the US.
Thane Gioia, co-CEO with Taylor, recalls Perelel’s pre-launch, when investors were asking them how big the women’s health market was for fertility, pregnancy and postpartum, believing it was a small opportunity for revenue. “The positive of today is that, at least from the investor community, they realize that women’s health is a very small opportunity for all of us to solve,” she told TechCrunch.
These numbers actually show some healthy growth, but in recent years all companies — unless they’re AI — are still seeing some difficulty in the funding environment. According to the Silicon Valley Bank 2023 report, the flow of venture dollars to women’s health companies increased 314% since 2018, compared to a 28% increase for the health sector as a whole. Billions are flowing into the sector: Deloitte found that 2% of venture dollars into the health sector went to women’s health companies, hitting $41.2 billion in 2023.
It was only natural that Perelel and Loom’s paths would cross, and Chidi sat down with Taylor and Thain Gioia at a brunch earlier this year to talk about the next steps for their two companies. Chidi wanted to sell the loom.
“After we launched our app on the App Store last October, I knew I wanted to go ahead and ideally find a company that had high clinical acuity – or high consumer acuity and could use what we built. A more 360 way,” Chidi said.
“This kind of intentional education and health information and content really doesn’t come together in any other brand in the category,” says Thain Gioia. “It was exciting to create something so different, but from two existing strong brands.
Perelel said its next steps are “the broader goal of supporting women and supporting women’s health.”
LOOM has scaled back its team over the past few months, and by the time the acquisition closed this week, Chidi was the only remaining employee. She says that she is not an idle person and aside from being a consultant for Perelel, she is currently working as a consultant for other brands including Nike. She wrote a book ten years ago and is working on an anniversary edition. “More time to write would be great,” she said.
This section has been updated to reflect who Chidi will mentor.
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