Fertility tracking business Glow raised $17 million in a Series B round to support the global reach of its apps to help women track their fertility and follow the development of their unborn child, according to a company’s statement and blog post. It’s also interested in attracting customers who don’t think they’re ready to get pregnant yet to offer useful insights for longterm planning.
Its newest investor, Formation 8, led the Series B round which included backing from Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. This makes Formation 8’s second digital health investment after startup health insurer Oscar. Another healthcare company in its portfolio is an early stage biotech company, Taxon Biosciences that uses genomics to Formation 8 founding partner Joe Lonsdale will join the board of directors and so will Nellie Levchin, managing partner of HVF.
Earlier this year, the company rolled out Glow for Enterprise — an employee benefit to help them gain access to its Glow app and a membership for Glow First, a not-for-profit crowdfunding program to help reduce the cost of fertility treatments.
Since PayPal co-founder Max Levchin started the company a little more than one year ago, Glow’s fertility tracker has been used for a little more than 25,000 pregnancies. It has also grown staff numbers from five to 22 since the summer 2013. It currently has three products: Glow First, Glow for Enterprise and Glow Nurture which provides useful information for mothers to track the development of their unborn child and manage their health. Mike Huang, a co-founder and CEO said the company wants to “double-down on the product, on our data and research, and on insurance.”
