Breast pump startup Willow acquires assets of Elvie as UK women’s health pioneer moves into administration
Ladies’s well being and its startups constructing related breast pumps, interval trackers, and different apps and {hardware} designed for girls have collectively pulled in additional than $5 billion in funding within the final 5 years, however the market is tight, and now, two of the trailblazers within the house are coming collectively as consolidation beckons.
Willow, the San Francisco startup that made its identify with wearable breast pumps, is buying Elvie, which began with a wise Kegel coach earlier than increasing to different merchandise for brand spanking new moms, together with its personal breast pumps and most just lately, a bassinet.
Phrases of the deal haven’t been disclosed however we perceive that it’s coming as Elvie enters administration. The London startup raised greater than $186 million over the past 12 years with buyers, including Octopus Ventures, BlackRock, and Blume Fairness, amongst others. Its final valuation was $241 million, per knowledge from PitchBook.
The businesses have been in dialog for a while, after Willow approached Elvie to purchase it. However as talks progressed, Elvie additionally approached the tip of its runway.
“The transaction is taking form after many months of different expectations,” Willow CEO Sarah O’Leary mentioned in an interview.
We perceive Willow is taking up the prevailing enterprise, together with its merchandise and workforce. There are presently 170 folks working throughout London and Bristol, though a few of these are already figuring out their discover intervals and gained’t be approaching to Willow.
For its half, Willow has raised round $254 million in a mixture of fairness and debt with buyers, together with the likes of NEA and Meritech. Its valuation, per PitchBook, had risen to as a lot as $256 million in 2021 (a excessive watermark for enterprise funding usually) however had dropped in 2024 when the corporate raised a mixture of fairness and debt.
O’Leary, who stepped into the CEO function on the finish of 2023, declined to touch upon its present valuation however mentioned that the corporate could also be seeking to increase extra later this yr.
Elvie’s tip out of business speaks to a number of the wider challenges on this planet of ladies’s well being, which is estimated to be a $60 billion market this yr however has confronted various headwinds. The market since 2021 has continued to be difficult for later-stage startups, particularly these that aren’t targeted nearly solely on AI. There usually are not a whole lot of exit alternatives for girls’s well being companies in the meanwhile. Plus, as O’Leary factors out, the market (eyeing that $60 billion determine, little doubt) has been flooded with a plethora of cheaper merchandise.
The recent drama with 23andMe additionally highlights a number of the huge points with managing person knowledge, particularly well being knowledge, when issues go awry with the enterprise. And that’s maybe much more the case with ladies’s well being and reproductive companies within the present political local weather.
And, as ever, {hardware} — or at the least the flexibility to show {hardware} startups into worthwhile companies — stays arduous.
Willow’s hope is that its acquisition of Elvie marks the beginning of some wider consolidation and Willow’s personal efforts to construct out a wider platform: If exit alternatives are few and much between, then make your personal platform and turn out to be the consolidator.
Ladies’s well being as a class actually arose over time because it grew to become, because of the cloud, smartphones and improvements in huge knowledge analytics, easier-to-build apps to interact with the market, and {hardware} prototypes launched by way of crowdfunding platforms to gauge shopper curiosity. These merchandise additionally got here out of a extra empowered demographic demanding tech to assembly their very own wants. Now Willow’s problem — and alternative — will probably be to see if it will possibly convert that into revenue over time.
“We need to present that femtech merchandise usually are not solely nice tales, however nice companies,” she mentioned.
