PearX S20 alum Seven Starling raises $10.9M to expand access to specialized women’s healthcare

Today, PearX S20 alum Seven Starling announced a $10.9M Series A round to expand access to specialized women’s healthcare. The round was led by RH Capital and supported by Pear, Emerson Collective, March of Dimes, and others. 

We’ve been backers of Seven Starling since day one of their company, and we’re excited to double down on them in this round. Not only have they proven to be an unwavering team but they have built an important and high growth business.

We met the Seven Starling founding team (Tina Keshani, Sophia Ritcher and Julia Cole) over a Zoom call in March 2020. At the time, they were students at Harvard Business school working on a startup called June Motherhood at the time, an on-demand support service for expecting mothers, providing personalized care at home and online throughout pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood. 

Ten days after our first meeting, COVID-19 shutdowns began. Despite the uncertainty at that moment in time, we decided to not only award them the Pear Competition, but also to invite them to join our PearX S20 cohort. 

Here are a few characteristics that made Seven Starling stand out to us:

• Exceptional consumer DNA: The Co-founders, Tina Beilinson (CEO), Sophia Richter (CPO), and Julia Cole (COO), were a fantastic group. They were exceptional, clear thinkers and communicators, scrappy operators that had spent months researching the space, and had strong consumer DNA, having worked at great consumer brands like Warby Parker and Kind.
• Proof of execution. During the time in business school the team had tirelessly worked to validate their idea. By the time we met them, they had built a no-code prototype and had enrolled their first patients. 
• Strong mission and product vision: Seven Starling took flight to help women navigate the most meaningful transitions in their life.
• Untapped opportunity in Women’s Health: 33 million suffer from mental health conditions every year. Women are also 2x more likely to suffer from depression than men. Just last year, one in three new mothers suffered from perinatal mood disorders. Maternal mortality in the US is higher than our peer countries and is actually worsening. According to the CDC, the number one leading cause of maternal deaths in the US is undiagnosed mental health problems. Seven Starling saw this gap four years ago and has reinvented the clinical standard for women’s behavioral health.

The summer of PearX S20, we worked together over Zoom. In just 12 weeks, they built an app, closed key partnerships and achieved their first revenue. They closed a Seed round right after demo day that included Pear alongside top-tier VCs such as  Emerson Collective, Magnify Ventures, and Expa. They were off to the races. 

Our partnership with Seven Starling went beyond PearX. We’ve worked closely with their team over the last four years to help them build the foundations of a long lasting company. Here are some of the ways we partnered with Seven Starling over the last four years:

Navigating to product market fit and working through a pivot:

A year after PearX, we realized that scaling the initial product was not going as planned. Despite the customer love, the acquisition costs were too high and healthy unit economics seemed elusive. We had a difficult call where we aligned that “it was not working” and decided to iterate again on the product. We worked together very closely for a few months and we went back to listening to the customers. As part of this exercise, we realized our most loyal customers were looking for mental health support. OB-GYNS were also desperate for solutions for their patients – most couldn’t offer that mental health support themselves. 

We decided to initially focus on a very narrow value proposition: maternal mental health. Then, we figured out that we also needed to innovate in the acquisition channel. We partnered with OB-GYNs to build a trusted referral network that delivered high intention patients.

By focusing on a large but narrow value proposition ($8B+ maternal mental health market), we achieved product market fit and Seven Starling can now effectively grow into the nearly $55B+ women’s mental health opportunity. By innovating in the acquisition channel, we were able to grow rapidly with little cash spent: today 90%+ of Seven Starling’s patients are acquired through OB-GYN referrals, a key wedge into this market. A core value proposition to Seven Starling’s patients and referring providers is that they’re in-network with most major health plans including UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. 

Hiring: 

Our team has helped Seven Starling make critical hires. Early on, our partner Vivien introduced them to a key advisor: Dr. Amy Roskin. She was so bought into the team’s vision, she joined as their Chief Medical Officer in 2022. Amy was an OB-GYN for over 20 years, was previously the CMO of The Pill Club, and was also an attorney who specialized in Telemedicine law. Laura from our Talent team also jumped into hiring for Seven Starling, helping them hire their founding engineer. This was their first technical hire and they’ve had a tremendous impact on their journey.

Fundraising: 

Since we started our partnership, we have helped the Seven Starling team navigate each of their fundraising rounds from  determining the fundraising strategy, to pitch creation to coming up with the target investor list. We are happy to have a phenomenal group of investors around the table, all of which believe deeply in the vision of the company. 

Where are they today? 

Seven Starling  has grown tremendously over the past year, they have also delivered industry leading time to care with seven days to first appointment (industry average is three-six months) and 90% statistically significant reduction in PHQ-9 score after completing the program. Over 85% of patients are in-network plans which means patients access care for just their copay. This is all a result of the incredible clinical and operational execution horsepower the team has demonstrated.

What is next? 

We are excited about Seven Starling’s impact on women’s health. The space is still a huge untapped opportunity and behavioral health impact is inseparable from a woman’s overall health outcome. Seven Starling is positioned to meet the specialized needs of women throughout every stage of their lives, empowering them to thrive and achieve their fullest potential. I’m excited to join their board to support them on this ambitious and admirable mission. 

It has been a privilege to partner with the Seven Starling team – their operational excellence and clarity of thought has made the journey to date an exhilarating one. 

However, we realize the work is not over; we still have a lot to build! All of us at Pear VC are excited to continue our partnership with them.