Bringing Breast Cancer Early Detection Support Directly to Women: Our Seed Investment in Gabbi
I’ll never forget the courage and determination in my mother’s eyes when she shared the news with us: she had breast cancer, and she was going to fight it with everything she had for her three young children and my dad. She was 46 years old.
Our family was not alone in that painful experience. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer; 1 in 8 women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her life and recent studies predict a more than 50% increase in cases diagnosed from 2011 to 2030. Understanding one’s individual risk and obtaining early detection are critical levers to combatting these statistics and it’s never been more urgent to invest in making risk assessment ubiquitous and affordable for women everywhere. And yet most of the risk assessment models today are trained using data from women 35+ years old and white. Most of the screening that is encouraged and reimbursed by health plans targets women age 50+.
Today, we are proud to share the news of our investment in Gabbi, an AI-powered risk assessment platform for breast cancer. Gabbi has validated a proprietary consumer-facing risk model backed by claims data to accurately predict a women’s risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer built off of the most diverse and inclusive claim sets in the world. This was a huge achievement in that it proved Gabbi can be both groundbreakingly diverse and equally accurate at 82% accuracy. Gabbi’s unique model is able to predict risk for women across age and ethnicities.
Kaitlin Christine is the force behind Gabbi as Founder and CEO. Her life story is a remarkable one and she blends her passion for this as her life’s work with her background in science and genetic research to lead the charge here. In 2012, Kaitlin’s mom found a lump in her breast and it took 4 different modalities to actually diagnose what was wrong. Unfortunately, it was too late and her mom died of delayed diagnosis 8 months later. Shortly after Kaitlin’s mom died, she found a lump in her own breast. Eventually, she underwent what was supposed to be a preventative mastectomy only to be diagnosed with breast cancer in surgery, she was only 24. Gabbi is named after Kaitlin’s mom, Lise Gabrielle.
Bread & Butter Ventures is leading Gabbi’s oversubscribed $4.4M seed round to take this solution to the next level. We are proud to invest alongside Female Founders Fund, WR Hambrecht, Phoenix Rising, Commonwealth Ventures, Advisors VC, Coyote Ventures, Gaingels and prominent angels including, David Kidder, Sarah Jones Simmer and Naseem Sayani. Gabbi will launch later this year via employers who will provide Gabbi as a benefit to their employees. This new funding will go towards funding team growth and product development.
These challenges represent an enormous economic burden to the healthcare industry and an unspeakable toll to the women and their families who are touched by breast cancer. After my mom’s brave fight, we shared twenty years with her in remission. We were heartbroken to lose her in 2015, far too soon. I’m in the high-risk category myself based on my family history and my physiology, and like many women I have experienced firsthand what it’s like to navigate the healthcare system. It brings me great hope for the future that through Gabbi, we can leverage the best of technology available to empower women to take control of their health outcomes by first understanding their risk and then having clear steps to take action.
