Inside Startup Funding
Clair Health: Raising $11.6M to Build a Hormone-Aware Wearable
Jenny Duan, CEO & Co-Founder of Clair Health, and Abhinav Agarwal, CTO & Co-Founder, join Inside the Round to break down how they went from meeting at Stanford to building a hormone-aware wearable and raising $11.6 million in total funding. Clair Health is developing a wrist-worn device designed to track estrogen, progesterone, LH, and FSH. Jenny and Abhinav explain why they saw a gap in existing women's health technology, how advances in sensors and machine learning made their approach possible, and why privacy and FDA clearance are central to the product they're building. Then we get into the fundraising story. They discuss raising their first angel capital shortly after an early technical breakthrough, going through A16Z Speedrun, closing their seed round, and finding investors who believed in the larger opportunity in women's health. Jenny also shares why she didn't understand the phrase "fundraising is a full-time job" until she went through it herself, how relationship-driven the process became, and what it felt like to repeatedly hear women's health described as "niche." She and Abhinav explain how they evaluated investors, divided responsibilities during the raise, and decided who they wanted on their cap table. Topics we cover: Starting Clair Health at Stanford Building a new approach to hormone monitoring Privacy and sensitive health data Pursuing FDA clearance Raising the first angel round A16Z Speedrun and preparing for the seed raise Why fundraising became a full-time job Investor perceptions of women's health Being underestimated as a young founder Choosing the right investors What the new capital unlocks Advice for founders raising pre-seed Follow Inside Startup Funding for more conversations with founders and investors about how startup rounds actually get done.
