Flo, a fertility focused period-tracking app, has closed a $50 million Series B funding round which it says values the company at $800M — underlining how much value investors are now attaching to women’s health tech.

The 2016-founded startup raised a $1M seed in its first year and has gone on to raise a total of $65M. The latest B funding round is co-led by VNV Global and Target Global.

Flo’s user-base has grown to around 200M globally — a proportion of whom pay it a subscription to access exclusive content, in addition to the core period tracking features.

The app uses machine learning to offer users “curated” cycle tracking and predictions, personalized health insights, and real-time health alerts — based on tracked symptoms, with data fed in by its sizeable user base. So while it started out as a period tracker Flo now touts its app as a proactive, preventative healthcare tool for women —  connecting them to “science-backed content, expert-led courses and accurate cycle predictions”.

But that’s also a measure of increased competition for women-centric utilities like period tracking — with Apple, for example, (finally) adding cycle tracking in the Health app that’s native to iOS back in 2019. So femtech startups like Flo have to do a lot more than provide basic utility to win women these days.

Flo appears to be getting something right with its current content and marketing mix: Over the past 12 months it says its active subscriber base has increased 4x (Read more...)