附近上门

Professional tennis player has been vocal about her giving birth to her first child.

Subscribe to the 附近上门 Daily

So it鈥檚 no wonder that she, through her firm , is backing Los Angeles-based maternal and infant health tech startup in its new $3 million seed round. 鈥檚 ArlanWasHere Investments led the financing 鈥渨ith support from Revolution鈥檚.鈥� Prolific investor and 鈥淪hark Tank鈥檚鈥� 听补苍诲 also participated. Previous investors include Cross Culture Ventures, Acumen America, , , ,听补苍诲 others.

CEO and co-founder came up with the idea after seeing her mother, Linda, work for years as a labor and delivery nurse. Linda was one of the first women in the U.S. to become a board-certified lactation consultant and went on to design health giant Kaiser Permanente鈥檚 breastfeeding center, a program that was replicated up and down the West Coast. Over the years, Linda expressed frustration at the lack of connective technology in maternal care and with just how much in general maternal and infant health care had been left behind by the tech world.

鈥淲e started to realize that maybe this sort of solution wasn鈥檛 going to happen unless we built it,鈥� Melissa told 附近上门 News. Despite her extensive experience, Linda expressed concern with the complexity of the healthcare industry.

鈥淭he more we dug into it, we realized just how siloed the data is in the industry,鈥� she added. 鈥淪o the vision for the platform became one of aggregating the data and creating a much better pictures for moms鈥� and babies鈥� health over time. At the same time, we realized the opportunity to build software that could connect a community of providers, pediatricians, ob-gyns, lactation consultants and build a care program experience that could exist outside of a traditional hospital setting.鈥�

So in late 2014, the mother and daughter teamed up to found Mahmee. (聽came on board as a co-founder in 2017.) The pair spent about 18 months on R&D before they launched their first product. In 2016, Mahmee began serving patients with its data-driven model designed to 鈥減revent critical gaps鈥� in care. The company also began engaging organizations and groups to explore an enterprise business model. Mahmee鈥檚 platform works by linking a mother and baby鈥檚 health history and data, engages, checks on and monitors patients through 鈥渕aternity coaches鈥� and escalating concerns to doctors so that a mother and baby鈥檚 care plan 鈥渟tays up to date and critical red flags aren鈥檛 missed and interventions are performed when needed鈥� according to Melissa. It does this through a HIPAA-secure, online dashboard that is available to new and expecting parents as well as their medical providers.

To the Hannas, the need was paramount. About 700 mothers die and 50,000 are severely injured each year from birth complications, according to the , which also notes that for every five mothers dying in the United States from pregnancy and childbirth, three could have been saved.

So far, Melissa said Mahmee has helped reduce NICU readmissions for neonatal jaundice by 60 percent, and escalated almost 1,000 cases of moms鈥� critical care problems to physicians聽 including life-threatening conditions such as sepsis, postpartum hemorrhage, or suicide risk.

The company鈥檚 seed raise is in large part a response to what Melissa describes as an influx of interest from health systems, insurance companies and large hospital networks. To make its product accessible to families across all income levels, the company has partnered with such organizations to make it available as a benefit.

Mahmee currently has over 1,000 providers and organizations in its network, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, AltaMed, Children鈥檚 Hospital Los Angeles, and UCLA.

Williams said the startup personifies her firm鈥檚 investment philosophy.

鈥淕iven the bleak data surrounding maternal death and injury rates, I believe that it is 鈥淚 absolutely critical right now to invest in solutions that help protect the lives of moms and babies,鈥� she said in a press release.

, a partner at Revolution鈥檚 Rise of the Rest, said the Mahmee team 鈥渂rings deep clinical and industry expertise鈥� to address 鈥渁 massive unmet opportunity to improve maternal and infant outcomes by leveraging both personalized care and tech infrastructure at scale.鈥�

Despite the big names involved in Mahmee鈥檚 seed round, Melissa said the fundraising process was not without its challenges and that it took a long time to find people who were 鈥渢ruly aligned鈥� with the vision for the company and founding team.

鈥淢y experience was very consistent with others at this stage,鈥� she told 附近上门 News. 鈥淣ot everyone is biased against female founders or founders of color. But there are still investors out there who for some reason can鈥檛 put their finger on it or are just hesitant to invest in someone like me as CEO of a company.鈥�

But the diversity challenges were just one piece of the story.

鈥淭he business has a complicated business model. Healthcare is complicated,鈥� Melissa added. 鈥淪o the space we鈥檙e in is not something that speaks to all investors. But fortunately, Arlan Hamilton being one of our earliest investors and advocates paved the way to finding investors who are open-minded and willing to work alongside us to build out the vision for the company.”

Inside Illustration:

Team Photo courtesy of Keith Alcantara