Earlier today, DigitalOcean announced that it raised $50 million more from prior investors Access Industries and Andreessen Horowitz. The capital comes after the SMB and developer-focused cloud infrastructure company raised nine-figures worth of debt back in February.

DigitalOcean is a large private company that generated revenue at a run rate of around $250 million towards the end of 2019. The company announced today that it has reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR. (We recently added the company to our ARR club here.) That’s growth of around 20% in less than half a year, though we don’t know precisely when the company reached the $250 million mark, making it hard to calculate its true growth pace.

Critically, DigitalOcean is walking toward profitability while expanding.

DigitalOcean’s CEO Yancey Spruill told TechCrunch earlier this year that his firm would reach free cash flow positivity in the next few years, a timeline that appears to have moved up (more on that shortly). Provided that the cloud company can keep its growth pace up over the same time period, it could be well positioned for an IPO.

The new $50 million values the company at $1.15 billion, meaning it was worth $1.1 billion pre-money. DigitalOcean is not being valued like a SaaS startup today in revenue multiple terms, then, though its new valuation is still nearly double its old Series B valuation (a company spokesperson confirmed the numbers on that page).

New capital

TechCrunch wanted to know why the company raised equity capital so quickly after it had added debt to its books. The capital was surely welcome given the world’s economic condition, but the timing was worth digging into.

DigitalOcean was not “seeking additional funding,” according to Spruill, but after “reviewing our business performance and outlook with our investors at Access and a16z, they were interested in investing for our next phase of growth.” The company accepted, Spruill said.

Presumably, Digital Ocean’s quick revenue growth from a $250 million run rate to $300 million ARR played a part in the investment decision. For DigitalOcean, receiving a new, higher valuation and a monetary top-off from well-known investors may even provide a brand boost (see this article, especially in light of recent coverage the firm has attracted).

Regarding its plans for the new capital, Spruill told TechCrunch that DigitalOcean can now “better support the increase in demand we’ve seen from entrepreneurs and SMBs around the world as more businesses are transitioning to the cloud, particularly as a result of COVID.” Mark DigitalOcean down as one of the world’s companies that is seeing an uptick from the pandemic; most aren’t, but the firms that are appear to be using the moment to put more capital onto their balance sheets.

TechCrunch also wanted to know if the new capital opened new ground for the firm, or if its priorities for the new capital were similar to its preceding goals. The CEO told TechCrunch that his firm’s focus is the same, namely expanding its business.

“We remain committed to reaching $1 billion in revenue, achieving free cash flow profitability in the second half of this year and, ultimately, position DigitalOcean to be a public company,” Spruill said in an email.

That’s clear enough.

By that measure we can expect to see a DigitalOcean S-1 in the first half of 2021, if markets recover. So a16z and Access Industries (longtime investors in the company) could see a quick return for their most recent checks if current plans hold up.

The company’s release made note of “accelerating growth,” which TechCrunch wanted to know more about. How quickly is the company growing? Spruill didn’t share numbers to confirm or deny our rough math based on his firm’s public revenue milestones, but did tell TechCrunch that the company is “actively working on a number of initiatives to accelerate our revenue growth rate,” adding that these are internally dubbed “Grow Faster” initiatives.

Finally, TechCrunch was curious about the impact that COVID-19 is having on DigitalOcean. The company told us that it has “seen a modest increase in churn as a result of COVID-19,” but nothing too bad, saying that the change was “not significant” when “compared with recent trends immediately prior to the pandemic.”

On the positive side of the ledger, DigitalOcean said that its “sign up of new customers has been accelerating” and that it is seeing “increased business from some existing customers.” Adding that up for the SaaS kids: A little bit more churn, good new logo addition, and some upsell tailwinds. Overall that adds up to growth.

More when we have it, but now we’re at least set up to understand what the company does next.

Among the many problems with the prison system are enormous fees for things like video calls, which a handful of companies provide at grossly inflated rates. Ameelio hopes to step in and provide free communication options to inmates; its first product, sending paper letters, is being welcomed with open arms by those with incarcerated loved ones.

Born from the minds of Yale Law students, Ameelio is their attempt to make a difference in the short term while pushing for reform in the long term, said co-founder and CEO Uzoma Orchingwa.

“I was studying mass incarceration, and the policy solutions I was writing about were going to take a long time to happen,” Orchingwa said. “It’s going to be a long battle before we can make even little inroads. So I was thinking, what can I do in the interim while I work on the longer-term project of prison reform?”

He saw reports that inmates with regular communication with loved ones have better outcomes when released, but also that in many prisons, that communication was increasingly expensive and restricted. Some prisons have banned in-person meetings altogether — not surprising during a pandemic — leaving video calling at extortionate rates the only option for speaking face to face with a loved one.

Sometimes costing a dollar a minute, these fees add up quickly and, naturally, this impacts already vulnerable populations the most. Former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, for whom this was an issue of particular interest during her term, called the prison communication system “the clearest, most glaring type of market failure I’ve ever seen as a regulator.”

It’s worth noting that these private, expensive calling services weren’t always the norm, but were born fairly recently as the private prison industry has expanded and multiplied the ways it makes money off inmates. Some states ban the practice, but others have established relationships with the companies that provide these services — and a healthy kickback to the state and prison, of course.

This billion-dollar industry is dominated by two companies: Securus and Global Tel Link. The service they provide is fairly rudimentary compared with those we on the outside take for granted. Video and audio calls are scheduled, recorded, skimmed for keywords and kept available to authorities for a few months in case they’re needed.

At a time when video calls are being provided for free to billions around the world who have also been temporarily restricted from meeting in person, charging at all for it seems wrong — and charging a dollar a minute seems monstrous.

Ameelio’s crew of do-gooder law students and developers doesn’t think they can budge the private prison system overnight, so they’re starting with a different product, but one that also presents difficulties to families trying to communicate with inmates: letters.

Written mail is a common way to keep in contact with someone in prison, but there are a few obstacles that may prevent the less savvy from doing so. Ameelio facilitates this by providing an up-to-date list of correct addresses and conventions for writing to any of the thousands of criminal justice facilities around the country, as well as the correct way to look up and identify the inmate you’re trying to contact — rarely as simple as just putting their name at the top.

“The way prison addresses work, the inmate address is different from the physical address. So we scraped addresses and built a database for that, and built a way to find the different idiosyncrasies, like how many lines are necessary, what to put on each line, etc.,” said co-founder Gabe Saruhashi.

Once that’s sorted, you write your letter, attach a photo if you want, and it’s printed and sent (via direct-mail-as-a-service startup Lob). It’s easy to see how removing the friction and cost of printing, addressing and so on would lead to more frequent communication.

Since starting a couple months ago and spreading word of the service on Facebook groups and other informal means, they’ve already sent more than 4,000 letters. But while it’s nice for people to be able to send letters, Ameelio plans to cater to larger organizations that use mail at larger scales.

“The communications challenges that families have are the same challenges that criminal justice organizations and lawyers have when communicating with their clients,” explained Orchingwa. They have to manage the addresses, letter-writing and sending, and a network of people to check on recipients and other follow-up actions. “We’re talking to them, and a lot were very interested in the service we’re offering, so we’re going to roll out a version for organizations. We’re creating a business model in which these organizations, and some of them are well funded, can pay us back but also pay it forward and help keep it free for others.”

Sending letters is just the opening play for Ameelio, though, but it’s also a way to make the contacts they need and research the market. Outcry against the private calling systems has been constant, but the heterogeneous nature of prisons run under state policies means “we don’t have one system, we have 51 separate systems,” as Orchingwa put it. That and the fact that it makes a fair amount of money.

“There’s a lot of movement around getting Securus and Global Tel out,” he said. “But it would shift from families to the state paying, so they need to make back the money they were making from kickbacks.”

Some states have banned paid calls or never allowed them, but others are only changing their policies now in response to external pressure. It’s with these that Ameelio hopes to succeed first.

“We can start in states where there’s no strong relationship to these companies,” said Orchingwa. “You’re going to have state and county officials being asked by their constituents, ‘why are we using them when there’s a free alternative?’ ”

You may wonder whether it’s possible for a fresh young startup to build a video calling platform ready for deployment in such a short time. The team was quick to explain that the actual video call part of the product is something that, like sending letters, can be accomplished through a third party.

“The barrier right now is not at all the video infrastructure — enterprise and APIs will provide that. We already have an MVP of how that will look,” said Saruhashi. Even the hardware is pretty standard — just regular Android tablets stuck to the wall.

“The hard part is the dashboard for the [Department of Corrections],” Saruhashi continued. “They need a way to manage connections that are coming in, schedule conversations, get logs and review them when they’re done.”

But they’re also well into the development of that part, which ultimately is also only a medium-grade engineering challenge, already solved in many other contexts.

Currently the team is evaluating participation in a number of accelerators, and is already part of Mozilla’s Spring MVP Lab, the precursor to a larger incubator effort announced earlier today. “We love them,” said Mozilla’s Bart Decrem.

Right now the company is definitely early stage, with more plans than accomplishments, and they’re well aware that this is just the start — just as establishing better communications options is just the start for more comprehensive reform of the prison and justice system.

After testing the waters this spring with its incubator-esque MVP Lab, Mozilla is doubling down on the effort with a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies. The focus on “a better society” and the company’s open-source clout should help differentiate it from the other options out there.

Spurred on by the success of a college hackathon using a whole four Apple Watches in February, Mozilla decided to try a more structured program in the spring. The first test batch of companies is underway, having started in April an 8-week program offering $2,500 per team member and $40,000 in prizes to give away at the end. Developers in a variety of domains were invited to apply, as long as they fit the themes of empowerment, privacy, decentralization, community and so on.

It drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their MVP. The rest were invited to an “Open Lab” with access to some of Mozilla’s resources.

One example of what they were looking for is Ameelio, a startup whose members are hoping to render paid video calls in prisons obsolete with a free system, and provide free letter delivery to inmates as well.

“The mission of this incubator is to catalyze a new generation of internet products and services where the people are in control of how the internet is used to shape society,” said Bart Decrem, a Mozilla veteran (think Firefox 1.0) and one of the principals at the Builders Studio. “And where business models should be sustainable and valuable, but do not need to squeeze every last dollar (or ounce of attention) from the user.”

“We think we are tapping into the energy in the student and professional ‘builder communities’ around wanting to work on ideas that matter. That clarion call really resonates,” he said. Not only that, but students with canceled internships are showing up in droves, it seems — mostly computer science, but design and other disciplines as well. There are no restrictions on applicants, like country of origin, previous funding, or anything like that.

The new incubator will be divided into three tiers.

First is the “Startup Studio,” which involves a $75,000 investment, “a post-money SAFE for 3.5% of the company when the SAFE converts (or we will participate in an already active funding round),” Decrem clarified.

Below that, as far as pecuniary commitment goes, is the “MVP Lab,” similar to the spring program but offering a total of $16,000 per team. And below that is the Open Lab again, but with 10 $10,000 prizes rather than a top 3.

There are no hard numbers on how many teams will make up the two subsidized tiers, but think 20-30 total as opposed to 50 or 100. Meanwhile, collaboration, cross-pollination and open-source code is encouraged, as you might expect in a Mozilla project. And the social good aspect is strong as well, as a sampling of the companies in the spring batch shows.

Neutral is a browser plugin that shows the carbon footprint of your Amazon purchases, adding some crucial guilt to transactions we forget are powered by footsore humans and gas-guzzling long-distance goods transport. Meething, Cabal and Oasis are taking on video conferencing, team chat and social feeds from a decentralized standpoint, using the miracles of modern internet architecture to accomplish with distributed systems what once took centralized servers.

This summer will see the program inaugurated, but it’s only “the beginning of a multiyear effort,” Decrem said.

Parenting benefits company Cleo is partnering with on-demand childcare service UrbanSitter to address a problem facing many parents today amid the pandemic: a lack of childcare, even as they’re required to return to work. With summer camps, daycares and schools shut down for the months ahead, parents who need to work outside the home (or even inside, but without distraction) no longer have options. Cleo’s new solution, Cleo Care, powered by UrbanSitter, aims to address this problem. The company is offering a package to employers that will help connect families with vetted caregivers via concierge support or, as an alternative, with family co-op options, depending on the parents’ preference.

The program will additionally include access to other Cleo support programs, like one-on-one coaching and age-appropriate programs focused on developmental milestones, delivered weekly.

The launch of the new product arrives at a time when the coronavirus outbreak has caused a childcare crisis in the U.S. Working parents have become homeschool teachers, on top of their already overwhelming number of duties. Parents fortunate enough to work from home, however, are continually interrupted by children’s needs, leading to longer working hours to accomplish tasks, and often mental and physical exhaustion.

Cleo surveyed its member base in April 2020, roughly 80% of whom are in the U.S., and found that more than 50% of respondents didn’t have any childcare options due to the pandemic’s impact. It also learned that 1 in 5 families (with two parents) were considering having one partner leave the workforce in order to manage the care of the children. Meanwhile, 37% were considering having family move in.

Among those who were working, more than half felt their productivity was 75% or less than usual. And 1 in 4 felt their productivity was less than 50% of baseline.

The problem is massive. In the U.S. alone, there are 30.5 million working families, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Cleo Care solution will be made available to U.S. employers this month to give parents more options, as well as help employers to bring their staff back to work, when the time comes.

Of course, there’s a variety of opinions about how and when the U.S. should re-open its economy. But the reality is that some parents will need to return to their jobs ahead of the re-opening of child care centers or summer camp programs, many of which have been canceled. In Facebook groups, parents are already trying to solve the problem for themselves by organizing with neighbors for childcare co-ops or by hiring teens or college students for daytime babysitting jobs.

But not everyone has these options. And employers can’t just direct staff to Facebook to find a caregiver.

Instead, the Cleo Care program will provide member parents with concierge support for finding vetted care providers from the UrbanSitter network. Or if the families would prefer to work with neighbors, the solution can also offer to match network members interested in co-op solutions.

These features are new to UrbanSitter, which has never before offered co-op matching and is making the new concierge service exclusive to Cleo Care.

“As working moms desperate for a solution to the crisis facing parents today, we were focused on developing a solution that didn’t just work for our members and enterprise clients, but also one that we’d use ourselves. After experimenting and trying everything from virtual care to scheduling shifts to looking for new caregivers ourselves, we realized the only solution that would work for families would require a new model of childcare designed for the unique issues COVID-19 has created,” said Cleo CEO Sarahjane Sacchetti.

Sacchetti, the former chief marketing officer of Collective Health, stepped in to lead Cleo after its original co-founder Shannon Spanhake was ousted following issues around company culture and a falsified resumé. Since then, Cleo has been expanding its business in the form of numerous partnerships, including those with Natalist, Milk Stork, Playfully, Dadi and others.

The solution will roll out in pilot testing with large U.S. employers to start, the company says. International employers will have access to its Cleo Kids coaching solution while Cleo looks for partnerships with care provider networks outside the U.S.

The employers will pay a combined monthly membership fee for access to Cleo Kids and UrbanSitter as well as one-time matching fees for co-op matching or care provider matching and placement, when used by a family. Cleo says it’s working with employers to explore models to cover some of the matching costs, which can be supported if an employer offers a dependent care FSA.

A sign-up form is here.

Image credits: Cleo

On May 21 at 3pm ET/12pm PT, we’re hosting an Extra Crunch Live session with Steve Case and Clara Sieg of Revolution.

This chat is the latest in our growing series featuring notable investors, entrepreneurs and technologists. Previously, TechCrunch editorial staff sat down (virtually, of course) with Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee and Ted Wang, Sequoia’s Roelof Botha and Mark Cuban, to name a few.

There’s a lot to talk about with Case and Sieg, and Extra Crunch members are encouraged to come with their own set of questions to ask these renowned investors. Revolution is known for its wide range of investments, inside and out of the Valley, so we’re curious how the firm is addressing the COVID-19 crisis.

Steve Case was a co-founder of AOL and led the company as it became the internet giant of the ’90s — and did so outside of Silicon Valley. Because of this, he’s long been a champion of startups from other regions. Yet the firm still has a presence in Silicon Valley, and Clara Sieg has run that effort since 2012 after joining in 2010.

We’re curious how Case, Sieg and other partners are advising startups to weather this storm. With investments throughout the country, Revolution is in a unique position to have a holistic perspective on how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting startups.

Are they still funding startups right now? What metrics are they looking for? What regions of the country do they see less effected than others and which are hardest hit?

We have questions and we hope they have answers.

Extra Crunch members can ask their own questions directly in the Zoom Q&A. So come prepared! You can find the full information for the chat below. See you there!

Starting today, TechCrunch readers can send an Extra Crunch annual membership as a gift to a friend, family member or co-worker. For a limited time we’re offering the gift at a discounted rate of $99/year (plus tax).

The gifting feature can be found here.

Extra Crunch membership is designed for startup teams, entrepreneurs, investors and business school students, and it includes more than 100 exclusive articles per month:

Find out where startup investors plan to write their next checks in our weekly surveysBuild your company better with how-tos and interviews from experts on fundraising, growth, monetization and other key work topicsLearn about the best startups today through our IPO analysis, late-stage deep dives and other exclusive reporting delivered daily

Extra Crunch membership can save you time time with an exclusive newsletter, no banner ads, Rapid Read mode and our List Builder tool. Annual and two-year members can also save money with discounts on events and access to Partner Perks. Our Partner Perks provide discounted access to services from companies like AWS, Brex, DocSend, Crunchbase, Typeform and more. 

Gifting is currently supported in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and select countries in Europe. Purchases can be made through Visa, Mastercard and PayPal in all supported countries, but Amex support is limited to the U.S. and Canada.

If there are other features you’d like to see us add to Extra Crunch, please let us know by leaving a comment on this post or emailing me directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

TechCrunch readers can find the Extra Crunch gifting feature here.

SoftBank Investment Advisers and WeWork Labs say they’ve officially kicked off the first session of Emerge, an accelerator program designed for underrepresented founders.

In their press release, the companies describe Emerge as “launched by SoftBank with support from WeWork Labs” (that’s the co-working company’s global accelerator program), with a goal of bringing more equality to tech and venture capital.

It’s an equity-free, eight-week program that includes workshops, access to mentors from SoftBank and the WeWork community and sessions with SoftBank executives. It all culminates in a showcase event for investors and SoftBank partners.

The Emerge website describes the program as based in San Mateo, Calif. — but given COVID-19, the sessions and programming are all virtual.

“Supporting underrepresented founders is a top priority for us, ensuring we see more diverse startups across the tech ecosystem,” said Catherine Lenson, managing partner and chief human resources officer at SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “There is a lack of diversity in the sector as a whole, and we need to do more to address it. That is why we’re excited to launch this program and to see the positive impact that these inspiring founders will have.”

This is also a reminder that while the larger corporate entities are currently embroiled in a legal and financial dispute, WeWork and its largest investor remain closely intertwined.

Here are the 14 startups in the initial program:

Aquagenuity, which allows users to take any smart device and track water quality and monitor their environment in real timeBridge to College, which helps students choose colleges wisely by matching and providing dataCaldo uses flexible automation and mobile designs to power satellite eateries for restaurantsGameJolt, a platform for gamers to follow more than 100,000 games while they’re still in developmentKoniku, which is diagnosing disease using breathMogul, which helps employers find diverse talentMoment AI, which uses AI to understand the driver and improve safetyNode, which builds houses through a proprietary assembly kitOjaExpress, a marketplace connecting immigrants and foodies to local ethnic mom-and-pop grocery storesProven, which offers personalized skin care products powered by The Skin Genome Project, winner of MIT’s 2018 Artificial Intelligence AwardRebellyous Foods, a production stack for plant-based meatScriptHealth, which provides easy access to prescription medicationsShyft, which builds IoT hardware and integrated software to connect and intelligently manage distributed energy resourcesSPS, a cross-border payments provider operating across all major U.S. states and Canada

 

A little over a year after its graduation from Y Combinator’s demo day, the on-demand construction materials delivery service Curri is beginning to offer its services in all 50 states.

Co-founded by Matt Lafferty and Brian Gonzalez, Curri aims to solve one of the major hurdles for local construction suppliers who miss out on sales because of an inability to deliver to contractors when they need it.

The company estimates that it saves its customers roughly half the cost of deploying an in-house fleet for delivery. 

“They act as a wholesaler doing all the sales, but they’re also acting as a logistics company as well,” said Lafferty. “We provide a solution for them to flex up or down and save money.”

After graduating from Y Combinator in the summer of 2019, the company tested its services in the Southern California region. Now, as construction looks ready to return to a more normal schedule in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic, the company is capitalizing on increased demand to offer its services nationwide.

“Construction has stayed essential through this whole crisis,” said Lafferty. “Depending on how states were handling it there were different levels of what was seen as essential construction. Industry-wide there was what I would call a great pause… [But] since April we’ve grown week-over-week and even more so now when things are really lifting.”

The company charges its customers by mile traveled and operates with a similar business model to Uber or Lyft, says Lafferty. The drivers are all gig workers, but Lafferty says they’re paid a premium to other delivery services because of the urgency of the company’s deliveries. “We have high-dollar items that are going out and they’re typically more urgent,” Lafferty said. “We’re able to pay our driver 25% to 30% better.”

The Los Angeles-based company raised seed funding from Initialized Capital, the firm founded by Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian (which also employs former TechCrunch staffer, Kim-Mai Cutler… Hi Kim-Mai!)

With the global economy still sorting itself out in the face of the pandemic, we’re hearing about fewer new venture capital funds these days. However, today is an exception, as Cathay Innovation has raised a $550 million second fund, which is about double the size of its first fund and, according to its leader Denis Barrier, is larger than the firm’s “original target.”

Cathay Innovation’s initial fund had some winners. The firm, which is part of the same org but distinct from private-equity outfit Cathay Capital, invested in Pinduoduo. The Chinese e-commerce giant raised money from Cathay Innovation when it was an early-stage startup. It’s worth around $70 billion today. Cathay Innovation’s first fund also led Chime’s Series B; that company is now worth nearly $6 billion.

We got on the horn with Barrier to learn a bit more about what’s changed for his firm and what its plans are for the new capital.

With its new fund, Barrier told TechCrunch that his firm’s model — target stage, target ownership percentage, etc. — isn’t changing. So if the model isn’t changing, why raise more money? What will it do with the surplus cash?

According to Barrier, two things. First, more money will allow the fund to follow winners a bit more over time. According to the VC, fund one might have put more capital into Pinduoduo and Chime if it had had the capacity to do so. Some venture firms use one-off special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for this sort of work. The other option is to raise a larger fund. And second, Barrier wants to do more deals in Southeast Asia.

This geographic expansion fits into Cathay Innovation’s model. The firm has offices around the world, and tries to share information from one geo to another. The goal is to learn from one and apply that knowledge elsewhere in order to spot impending trends in, say, America, after watching, say, China. The hope is that this sort of information sharing allows it to make earlier, better bets.

Indeed, this concept is something that Barrier has stressed to TechCrunch before. In our most recent chat he noted two examples of the concept in action. The first being that his firm saw the rise of neobanks (challenger banks) in Europe before they really got off the ground in the United States. Hence the Chime deal. And the Cathay Innovation executive noted that because his firm has an office in China, it had a 45-day advance on the rest of the world regarding COVID-19, giving it the chance to tell its portfolio companies what was coming.

It’s an interesting model that worked in its first fund; the real proof of the firm’s ability to see around corners will come with its second fund’s results. Given that this new capital vehicle is about twice as large as its first it has lots more returns to generate. It will need more breakout deals, and will need to ensure that it pours capital into them.

On that point, there is one more potential difference between the first and second funds. Barrier told TechCrunch that his team can now lead larger rounds if it wants. This could, again, help the firm get larger cuts of companies it believes will deliver outsize returns.

And for all the founders out there, Cathay Innovation says its investing pace is about the same as before, so if you are looking for capital, here’s a new fund that’s hunting for deals.

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London-based femtech hardware startup Astinno has picked up an Innovate UK grant worth £360k ($450k) to fund further testing of a wearable it’s developing for women experiencing a perimenopause symptom known as hot flushes.

The sensor-packed device, which it’s calling Grace, is being designed to detect the onset of a hot flush and apply cooling to a woman’s wrist to combat the reaction — in a process it likens to running your wrists under a cold tap.

The aim is for algorithmically triggered cooling to be done in a timely enough manner to prevent hot flushes from running their usual unpleasant and uncomfortable course. While the bracelet wearable itself is being designed to look like a chunky piece of statement jewellery.

The femtech category in general has attracted an influx of funding in recent years, as venture capitalists slowly catch up to the opportunities available in products and services catering to women’s health issues.

But it’s fair to say menopause remains a still under-addresed segment within the category. Although there are now signs that more attention is being paid to issues that affect many hundreds of millions of middle aged (and some younger) women around the world.

The team working on Grace has built several prototypes to date, per founder Peter Astbury. He says some limited user tested has also been done. But they’ve yet to robustly prove efficacy of the core tech — hence taking grant funding for more advanced testing. At this stage of development there’s also no timeline for when a product might be brought to market.

Astinno and Morgan IAT, its commercial partner on the project, have been awarded the Innovate UK money via a publicly funded UK SMART grants scheme (the pair are getting match funding via the scheme, with the public body putting up 70% and Astinno and Morgan IAT funding the other 30% of their respective costs).

Loughborough University — Astbury’s alma mater — is also involved as a research party, and is being funded for 100% of its grant costs.

“Several prototypes have been created so far, mainly by myself having received electronics and design training as part of my degree at Loughborough University,” says Astbury. “Shortly after leaving university I also briefly worked with an electronics company who helped to refine some of the components within the Grace product.

“Morgan IAT has the crucial technical role of developing a number of prototypes in conjunction with Astinno. This includes both hardware and software development, building many more advanced prototypes that are being tested, refined and then tested again.

“We’re working with three researchers from Loughborough University which brings together industry leading expertise in menopause psychology and physiology. Based at the National Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine, the researchers are using their fantastic lab facilities to test Grace, meaning that everything we’re doing is being validated by professional research. Once this step is complete, we’ll have more of an idea regarding product release time-frames.”

Astbury founded the startup last summer — but had begun work on the concept for Grace several years before, during his final year at Loughborough, back in 2016.

“As a member of Loughborough’s business incubator, ‘The Studio’, I was awarded an enterprise grant which helped to fund the business. I have also been putting my User Experience design skills and expertise to good use, contracting for start-ups and larger healthcare companies on a part-time basis to ‘bootstrap’ development,” he adds.

The idea for the wearable came after Astbury conducted user research by talking to women about their menopausal symptoms and hearing about their coping strategies for hot flushes and the night sweats that can be induced.

“A woman was telling me about her symptoms and how she coped with them until now. She would wake up ten to fifteen times each night due to her night sweats. Each time, she would go to the bathroom and run her wrists under cold water which helped the flush to subside. Looking into this method in more depth, it became clear that cooling an area of skin can indeed be extremely effective and there are lots of women that use this technique,” he explains.

“During a hot flush, your brain mistakenly thinks that you are becoming too warm and causes your body to lose heat. This results in sweating, a reddening of the skin and shortness of breath. The skin, however, acts like your body’s thermometer, passing information to your brain. By applying cooling to the skin at the right time, we’re harnessing the body’s natural temperature regulation system. The brain receives signals that you are cool and, in turn, the body reacts in a way that is directly opposite to a hot flush.”

“The real key to Grace is accurately and reliably pre-empting hot flushes (the automated nature of the bracelet) so that cooling can be applied at the earliest stage possible,” he adds. “We’re doing that using a specific line-up of sensor technology and algorithms all working together but I’m afraid the details of that can’t be disclosed publicly yet.”

Astbury says he was keen to get grant funding at this stage of product development to avoid dilution of the business, given VCs would require their chunk of equity.

“One of the best things about Innovate UK for a science-based start-up like Astinno is that it doesn’t contribute to the dilution of your business,” he notes. “By the end of a successful grant project, a company becomes a much more attractive investment from the perspective of both investors and the start-up. I have had discussions with multiple angels/VC’s and will maintain those relationships, however a grant was the best option for us at this stage.”