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New Funding for Female Founders
Jessica Assaf (MBA 2016), Andy Coravos (MBA 2017), and Amrita Saigal (MBA 2014)
There’s been a wealth of good news for alumnae entrepreneurs in recent weeks, with founders Jessica Assaf (MBA 2016), Andy Coravos (MBA 2017), and Amrita Saigal (MBA 2014) among those announcing funding for their respective ventures.
Assaf is co-founder and CEO of the CBD-infused beauty brand The Uplifters’ Prima, which raised $9.2 million in a seed-plus funding round to support its retail expansion, according to coverage in the Los Angeles Business Journal. The round was led by institutional investors including H Ventures, Defy Partners, Greycroft, and Lerer Hippeau. Prima said it will use the funding to continue product development and support operations. The company sells its products online and through retail partners including Sephora, Nordstrom, Thrive Market, and Erewhon. Its products are vegan and cruelty-free; its operations are carbon and plastic neutral, according to Prima.
Saigal is co-founder and CEO of Kudos, a startup that has reengineered the disposable diaper for greater sustainability. Kudos announced the close of a $2.4 million seed round, according to a June 1 story in TechCrunch, including such investors as Foundation Capital, XFund, PJC, Precursor Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, SV Angel, Underscore VC, Alpha Bridge Ventures, and April Underwood. Kudos operates a D2C subscription model, offering a monthly supply based on a baby’s changing size and weight. It’s also the first and only disposable baby diaper to have earned the cotton natural seal from Cotton Inc. for having 100 percent cotton touching the baby’s skin instead of plastic.
And San Francisco-based HumanFirst raised $12 million in new financing led by Maverick Ventures, as well as Lux Capital, Arkitekt Ventures, Boost VC, SV Angel, Village Global, and Threshold Ventures, according to the Wall Street Journal. Coravos is co-founder and CEO of the startup, formerly known as Elektra Labs, which helps hospitals and pharmaceutical companies employ sensor technologies to move medical care and clinical trials into a patient’s home.
“A pharmaceutical company, for instance, may want to study how well patients on a particular medication are able to sleep. HumanFirst can scan the clinical-research landscape to identify studies in which researchers used sensors to take measures of sleep quality, like how soon someone wakes up after falling asleep,” the Wall Street Journal reports. This can help inform decisions on how to shape a study—but ultimately the company’s goal is to make health care more preventive, Coravos says.
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