Revisiting Maven Clinic’s 2015 Grand Central Tech Application

Kate Ryder (Founder & CEO, Maven Clinic)

Last week, Maven Clinic announced $110M in Series D fundraising, bringing the company’s valuation to over $1B. While there are roughly 800 tech unicorns in existence, what makes Maven’s reaching this milestone most impressive is that it’s the first healthcare company dedicated to women and families in the United States to do so.

In 2015, just a year after being established, Maven Clinic was accepted into the Grand Central Tech Residency program (GCT) and we ultimately decided to invest in their Seed extension round. As we knew the news was going to break last week, we took the time to review Maven’s CEO Kate Ryder’s application to GCT, and here are a few things that stood out:

1. Business Opportunity: “Maven fills a void in the healthcare system by giving women, who make 80% of healthcare decisions in the United States, near-instant access to practitioners focused on prenatal and postpartum care, children’s health, and other women’s health concerns.”
2. Product: Maven Clinic embraced telehealth out of the gate as the first telehealth platform specifically built for women and family health. Obviously, telehealth has proven to be one of the great “winners” of the COVID-19 pandemic and has been broadly adopted, but this was still a novel strategy at the time and Maven was seeing great traction even prior to COVID-19.
3. Traction: While Maven Clinic was still pre-revenue at the time of their application, they had recruited 800 healthcare providers while in beta and were seeing tremendous conversion from a novel postcard strategy they deployed.
4. Founder: Kate Ryder had an incredible command of the industry, the problem, and the opportunity inherent in providing a solution dedicated to prenatal and postpartum care. Most importantly, we had conviction that Kate was not going to quit until she solved the problem.
5. Team: When describing why her team was uniquely positioned, she shared… “We have all been through a few things in our careers before and we’re now all hungry to build a lasting product that makes a difference in people’s lives. And we’re scrappy.” This is precisely the type of founding team we look to support with the GCT program.

Much is made by venture firms and accelerators when companies they’ve worked with become unicorns. During Maven Clinic’s time at GCT, and in the Company building thereafter, we’d like to think there were several moments where our team got involved at critical junctures to add value. We’re proud of that work; it’s what we do everyday. But no company reaches the great heights Maven Clinic has attained due to anything other than the vision, capability, and tenacity of its founders and staff. Our hats are off to Kate Ryder and the entire Maven Clinic team. It’s been a pleasure watching your journey and we can’t wait to see what comes next.