Today, we’re announcing a $27 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital and Oak HC/FT to help hundreds of thousands more women and families get the healthcare they need.
In 1972, TIME ran a splashy cover featuring “The American Woman”. The special issue shows a silhouette of a female head overstuffed with baby toys, credit cards, and a button reading “Shirley Chisholm for President”. Forty-five years later, in 2017, TIME devoted six covers to women, including the “Person of the Year” award. But whereas the 1972 version was a bit reductive, the covers of 2017 were unapologetically real. Because what we started to talk about in 1972, and what is now at the center of our cultural dialogue, is that women’s issues affect our entire world — from the individual, to our families, our society, our government, and our economy.
But acknowledgement isn’t enough. Today, 43% of new moms still drop out of the workforce within the first year after having a child. This exacerbates the wage gap and the female leadership gap at big companies — and it is a problem that many American companies are finally starting to realize and address. When our very systems are the blockers of progress, real change requires rethinking and reshaping the systems from within. And doing this, critically, requires investment.
So here’s the good news: this is not an article pontificating on the inequities of dishwashing and childrearing. This is a fundraise announcement.
Maven, the women’s and family health company my team and I started nearly five years ago, focuses on changing the complex and entrenched healthcare system from within. Our mission is to provide women and new families support, both personal and professional, in ways we used to only imagine — including on-demand access to fertility experts, pregnancy and postpartum specialists, and dedicated back-to-work coaching that makes juggling a career and a growing family possible. In fact, Maven has empowered me throughout my own two pregnancies in the last two years and I couldn’t imagine juggling being CEO and a mother without this support. Today, we are proud to announce that Maven has raised $27 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital and Oak HC/FT that will enable us to reach hundreds of thousands more women and families.
We will use the capital today to double down on Maven’s Family Benefits platform, to support more women in the workforce, more women in leadership positions, more diverse families, and more confident working parents. Today we’re launching our latest feature, breastmilk shipping, which is an important component of our return-to-work program as it equips working parents to travel.
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