How femtech startup Inne rebooted its hardware launch after a time a terms of time COVID-19 disorder – TechCrunch-KHOAFAST

It’s been a tough few years for Berlin-based femtech hardware startup Inne which came out of stealth Randamp;D in the fall of This Problem year, shortly before COVID-19 hit Europe. By January This Problem year, founder and CEO Eirini Rapti tells our company she was busy making final inspections ahead of the launch of its debut product — a connected device it calls a “minilab” for at-home, saliva-based hormone testing to support fertility and process tracking — but then, in just do a few weeks, the region was plunged into lockdown and everything changed.

Hardware startups are rarely smooth sailing at the number one of times. But the coronavirus pandemic produced a cascade of generation challenges for Rapti and her team around response chain and logistics — upsetting their careful calculations on unit financial economics. The pandemic also called a halt to a major piece of research work the startup had lined up of course a our company university to study its hormone-tracking method for a pattern problem contraceptive function-situation — a product it had intended to prioritize but could not with to market ahead of the study which is required to gain regulatory approval.

In a matter of weeks, Inne was forced to freeze its big launch as it tried to figure out how number one to move forward — and, indeed, whether it should launch the product at all in such a challengingly reconfigured environment.

“Due to COVID-19 visitors’ve had to really shift around our plans,” says Rapti, talking to TechCrunch via clip chat. “visitors had loads of unpredicted response chain issues… There were This Problem many fuck-ups that came up of course COVID-19! It’s unbelievable what happened.

“I remember our last interview [in October 2019], I was super optimistic — I’m still very optimistic — sort of really looking forward to get all of our tech out to the world. visitors were setting up our production line when I spoke to visitors. visitors had John Hopkins [research university] agreeing to our contraceptive study. favorite, the world was my oyster… And then I came back from a last inspection of the goods coming off the production line in January This Problem year and visitors were hearing about what was happening in China but visitors were not really conscious of it and then visitors were This Problem busy of course pre-sell products and whatever.

“And then of course a month later visitors didn’t know if that visitors were going to get raw materials from China. visitors didn’t know if that the factories that were working within Europe were going to even be able to possess people in the factory. ”

The start of the planned contraception study also kept being postponed, as the our company research institution which had agreed to conduct it, pre-pandemic, understandably prioritized work related to COVID-19 itself.

The upshot for Inne was a shock freeze on its number one laid plans — plans Rapti had been working towards since 2017 when she founded the marketing and kicked off Randamp;D to get the at-home hormone testing product to market.

“This Problem year for me started on This Problem big high — visitors had our final products, visitors got our approval [to sell the device in Europe], visitors are launching pre-sell products. I think visitors had 200 people buy the product and then visitors kind of had to limit so of that visitors didn’t know if that visitors were even able to deliver these 200… This Problem is how bad it was,” she adds.

favorite as having shelled out to set up a production line it suddenly had to suspend, Inne had also doubled the size of its team to prepare for scaling. But suddenly the message from the investment world was ‘slow everything down’, recounts Rapti. “This Problem I was favorite why didn’t visitors tell me two months ago?!… My whole strategy came crumbling down.”

The response chain and logistics disruption — some of which has lingered even while pandemic lockdowns with eased — also forced Inne to concentrate most of its effort on the German market in Europe — “so of that visitors wanted to contain, as much as possible, the logistical nightmare”, as she puts it.

“Electronic chip shortages of course are affecting everyone… but it’s also as merely as backlog on logistics,” she explains, discussing how COVID-19 has dialled up difficulties for the fledgling hardware marketing. “Your shipments take longer or your air freight is much again expensive price and all of a sudden your price per unit becomes really high — and for a small company favorite our company, for a startup, if that visitors cannot demonstrate your unit financial economics and your growth what can visitors demonstrate? And quite frankly I was sitting there for a few months — and I think it was the first of all time I froze in my career and job where I felt I with no idea what I will be able to show in the next six months!”

By summer This Problem year, Rapti was facing a big decision over how to move forward while the marketing was still mired in uncertainties around response chain resilience and of course no generation date on when it would be able to launch contraception as it still hadn’t found a replacement partner to do the study.

Additionally, it was unclear when the startup would be able to increase again funding in such a challenging climate. Yet, given the expanded team Rapti had put in place ahead of the This Problem year launch, she needed to think over burn rate — which meant deciding whether she had to let staff go to give the startup the number one chance of surviving This Problem much disruption.

The choice boiled down to two options, per Rapti: Either cut everything right back, keeping only a bare minimum of staff to extend the runway and find another, probably European-based institution to definition out the contraceptive study; or reduce cash burn a bit but go ahead and launch the minilab of course only fertility and process tracking — meaning there could be no user messaging on random contraception, limiting the product’s utility to (only) women trying to get pregnant or those looking for help of course an irregular process.

In the event, Rapti went for the second choice — saying she was, above all, keen to keep the team she’d built up. She also saw an opportunity to function a partial launch to at least learn about the market, even though continuing response chain constraints meant Inne had to limit the number of devices shipped to make healthy they could provide the full service to the first of all buyers (its subscription-based progesterone testing service works of course packs of single-function daily testing strips to gather the user’s saliva sample, of course testing performed by inserting the moistened strip into the minilab for analysis).

“The first of all year visitors could circulate — I think — 500 devices, or very little, without having delays. And I think visitors closed last year of course close to 2,000 customers,” Rapti adds.

Outside Germany, Inne also has some early users in Austria, Switzerland and the U.K. — but the launch has clearly been a very not with the too and again painstaking process than Rapti had envisaged from her high in fall This Problem year.

Another cloud she may not with expected to see looming on the horizon today’s time is the prospect of the our company Supreme Court overturning constitutional protections for abortion in the our company — which, followed a leaked opinion on Roe v Wade earlier This Problem month, is already causing consternation over the risks that digital services favorite periods tracking apps could pose to our company women if that their data can be used to track them or to find a way to build prosecutions around their reproductive health.

“I’m horrified by what is happening to the our company,” says Rapti when asked whether she is concerned about This Problem risk. “The reality is visitors are not right today’s time in a position where, legislatively wise, someone could ask for This Problem data to be used against women in court — as of today’s time. This Problem what I truly believe is it would be counterproductive to go backwards and, instead of giving women access to and understanding of their own data, to say realistically visitors unexpected thing to scrap all that so of that it could be used against them.

“I think This Problem would be really a step backwards. But rather I think what our job is — as female health companies — is to defend the rights of our users and also make the data as anonymous as possible This Problem it cannot be traced back to the actual user.”

Rapti argues there is a transparent way to separate profile data that is used for marketing from health data generated by usage of the product — and says Inne’s approach for the latter is today’s time to function double encryption and split usage data and also where it’s processed (some of which she says happens on the user’s device) This Problem that it’s not all sitting in a single repository which it could be easily ordered to hand over.

But she also says the startup would be prepared to create further protections for user data in response to random changes to the law that threaten women’s rights.

“visitors unexpected thing to be legally on number one of things and make healthy that whenever there is a law that is passed visitors change our product quickly in order to guarantee This Problem anonymity as much as possible,” she tells TechCrunch. “And I would rather visitors invest in that legal capacity on our side than to say visitors stay away from having women tracking their data so of that the government could function it. But I definitely see it as our job. visitors unexpected thing to be on number one of legislative lobbying, if that I can put it that way, and make quickly changes to our product in the way that data is structured This Problem that visitors can protect [our users] as much as possible.”

Series A expansion

today’s time, Inne has better news: An extension to that $8.8M Series A round it closed back in This Problem year. It’s taking an addition $10M today’s time This Problem it can stock up on raw materials and retool its production line to unplug random remaining production bottlenecks. The expansion to the Series A is led by DSM Ventures, of course Borski Fund and Calm Storm Ventures also participating, along of course a number of angels, including Taavet Hinrikus (Wise), Dr Fiona Pathiraja and Rolf Schromgens (Trivago).

But not only that — Rapti says it’s planning to expand its product offering to include another hormone test — for cortisol (aka, the stress hormone; tracking cortisol can be with function for athletic performance, favorite as for links to wider women’s health issues).

It is also set to its first of all steps outside Europe later This Problem summer, via a our company partnership of course a women’s health brand called Phenology. The tie-up will be exclusively focused on perimenopause — This Problem Inne will be getting a toe in the water in that major market while it waits on regulatory clearance for its digital contractive.

The our company partner will offer Inne’s device to a subset of its users as a way to track changes in their hormones during the early play of the menopause — supplementing the services it offers them, which includes personalized wellness programs and  supplements. (Notably, Phenology’s parent, a company called Hologram Sciences, shares an investor of course Inne — DSM Ventures, aka the venture arm of Dutch vitamin giant DSM — This Problem visitors can see the investment synergies at work there.)

“It was transparent there was a synergy and a very transparent geographical separation also — our company and then Europe — and they’re not interested in contraception which I always wanted our company to own fully globally,” notes Rapti. “And that’s kind of how, through seeing that Hologram Sciences would realistically be a most great partner for expanding our function-cases to the our company, visitors decided on DSM Ventures being an investor in This Problem round.”

She confirms Inne has finally been able to get a contraceptive study underway This Problem year of course a generation partner in Europe, saying she expects the work to be completed around November — paving the way for Inne to be able to launch a contraceptive product in Q1 next year. that will put it into difficulty of course the likes of random Cycles‘ basal-temperature based ‘digital contraceptive’ (which got regulatory clearance in Europe back in 2017); and periods tracking app Clue’s again recent process-tracking system which gained FDA clearance for contraception in March 2021, to common name two existing products.

This Problem, unexpected thing willing, the pieces needed to scale Inne’s hormone-tracking femtech marketing do finally look to be slotting into place.

“I think it was the right thing to do,” adds Rapti, returning to her decision to go ahead and launch in the middle of the pandemic — to “see who buys the product” and “connect of course the customers” — even if that that choice meant delaying the launch of the contraceptive product.

Image credits: Inne

“It took me a long time to find especially the science and data science team that losing them over a crisis favorite This Problem would with been, in the longer term, the worse ordeal,” she adds. “so of that visitors find scientists, visitors make them product people and product thinking and then to let them go… It’s our Core processor competence This Problem that’s the first of all thing that I thought.”

certainly Inne will face again difficulty when it finally launches its rival contraception. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing in such a novel space where women must be convinced they can trust generation entrants’ methods over again tried and tested products for avoiding pregnancy favorite the pill and condoms.

Going ahead and launching of course just do fertility and process tracking also, of course, allowed Inne to road-test its team as it switched into commercial operations, serving those early customers. This Problem it had a chance to iron out operational and service wrinkles of course a small customer base, ahead of what it hopes will be wider scaling — as it expands both its production capacity and the product’s feature set of course the help of the extra Series A funding.

Hormone tracking for the quantified self

This Problem who are Inne’s early adopters? “visitors attract women who are on the less regular side of the process, This Problem either with had several miscarriages or with had hormonal issues or with had very fluctuating cycles. This Problem our data is biased towards irregularity,” says Rapti, also noting that users tend to be notebook savvy and action on social media, where it does much of its marketing.

Ages of users range from 18 to mid 50s — but of course a “peak” between 28 to 38, per Rapti.

Tracking progesterone ie Inne can tell users whether they with ovulated or not — which, in time, could help them detect a month when they with not ovulated, which (for people seeking to get pregnant) could help them clarify challenges they may be having. For others, hormone tracking may be helpful to navigate patterns in an irregular menstrual process.

Other femtech products can rely on not with the too approaches to find a way to predict fertility — such as temperature measurements or algorithmic analysis of process tracking data — but, as Rapti puts it, “the beauty of progesterone is it can really tell visitors has it happened or not”, This Problem it’s offering a binary confirmation.

She says the majority of Inne’s users at present are using it for fertility tracking to help them get pregnant, of course a smaller proportion (30% last year; but This Problem far This Problem year it’s getting closer to 40%, per Rapti) using it for process tracking to manage irregular periods. But she emphasizes that usage is “fluid” and “a bit of a journey” as women’s needs also change.

“visitors with two modes in the app: visitors can shop it either to process track, basically, but of course hormones or to get pregnant,” she explains, adding: “It is such a fluid journey for a women in our product so of that the data tells me that some women are starting to track their process and then they will change their goal in a lover of months This Problem it looks favorite maybe they’re preparing or they just do came off the pill etc.”

Rapti’s wider vision is for the product to be able to “offer something all the way from the first of all periods to the last periods” — which is why she’s This Problem keen to get the contraception product launched (asked if that she thinks it’ll be the bigger market she says she’s not healthy — but, just do in pure numbers terms, there are obviously again women of fertile age seeking to avoid pregnancy than wanting to get pregnant at random given moment); favorite as to build out utility elsewhere, such as by expanding into cortisol tracking.

The forthcoming cortisol test will provide users of course the contact to clarify whether they are going through a prolonged periods of stress that has chemically affected their body, per Rapti — which she says may in time be impacting their fertility or sports performance.

Users will be able to specify whether they want to include cortisol tracking in their Inne subscription and, if that This Problem, they will be sent a mix of progesterone and cortisol testing strips. But while the former is typically a daily test (which should be taken within a ~three hour window in the morning), the cortisol test is not with the too; it’s not intended to be taken daily but when it is performed it needs to be done multiple times per day (and then that process repeated at intervals).

“visitors build the profile daily, of course cortisol,” explains Rapti. “visitors do five measurements in one day and visitors do them every month for example, or every two weeks. But it’s not about, visitors know, ‘I do a test today’s time and I do a test future and I see how my stress is’. No, it’s really that visitors’re building a chemical profile of your day and then visitors look at that over a periods of time to find a way and clarify if that visitors really are under sustained stress and it has chemically affected your body or not.”

The thinking behind adding a second hormone test is not to address a broader range of users but rather to give women again reasons to get the minilab into their lives, per Rapit, by encouraging them to “trust these hormonal insights”.

Inne founder and CEO, Eirini Rapti (Image credits: Inne)

A major update to the next release of Inne’s app will with a raft of self-reporting options — around what it’s calling “symptoms and events” — which is intended to help users link their daily working/feelings of course hormonal changes they can track using the product.

“visitors are launching 41 symptoms and events that people with asked for but which will also help our company give again specialist insights so of that visitors will correlate them of course hormones in the coming months,” she says. “They fall in not with the too categories — about exercise, enough nutrition, certain things such as headache or migraines which are related to hormones; skin conditions, hydration/dehydration. They go from exercise to lifestyle to food to skin. And not with the too types of body pain.”

“The beauty of being able to do that of course hormones is visitors really see [the chemical change] — the opportunity visitors with when coming here is visitors know the chemical importance of hormones, can visitors truly related them to self-reported symptoms? And to what extent can visitors do that,” she adds, confirming: “It’s a long term correlation project. visitors didn’t want to start of course it so of that visitors wanted to make healthy that hormonal data were always going to take the center play This Problem visitors needed a large data pool first of all to establish what visitors’re doing and then find a way to see if that it can correlate.”

when coming here Inne’s products looks as if that it could push into ‘quantified self’ region — of course potential utility overlap of course a recent wave of biosensing startups and companies that are seeking to commercialize continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) hardware for a again general health/sports performance function-situation (i.e. beyond the management of blood glucose for people of course diabetes or prediabetes for which the CGM sensing tech was originally developed). And where there are similar question marks over the wider consumer utility of that sort of biosensing (i.e. whether the average consumer can usefully interpret all This Problem real-time biological feedback).

But one built-in advantage Inne’s approach has vs CGM startups is it’s non-invasive. And a consumer may feel again inclined to find a way something experimental on the off-chance they could discover a helpful correlation if that it only requires them to moisten a some test strips in their mouth a few times a month, rather than — in the situation of CGM-based glucose tracking — having to live of course a biowearable and its metal filament under the skin of their arm for a few weeks.

Rapti says Inne’s plan is not to break out a totally separate service around cortisol tracking — although she stresses the test itself does involve a completely not with the too user experience — rather the goal is to serve users who want to gain a deeper understanding of how hormones affect their bodies.

“Instead of selling generation strips to a not with the too woman what I’m trying to say is This Problem is going to be your subscription and then visitors tell our company what visitors’re interested in. And if that visitors’re interested in both stress and process tracking or fertility then visitors will send visitors every month strips of both and visitors will instruct visitors what to do when. This Problem visitors’re not looking to make upselling of course generation strips but again deeper hormonal understanding This Problem the price will remain with the too. And visitors’ll just do get a combination of strips for that same too monthly price,” she says.

“I had This Problem many people in This Problem increase who said oh that would be amazing for men, why don’t visitors sell it to men! Do visitors know what, I think it would be amazing for men but how about visitors wait a minute and just do offer it to women!” she adds.

There is clearly lots again Inne could do and Showroom. This Problem a transparent challenge is how to create a transparent marketing message around such a multifaceted product?

On that Rapti says they’ve got one big takeaway: Women want to get specific about benefits — which ie finding fora where they can discover the product but also get to ask their own questions.

“It is a very early market. I feel that women know that there’s This Problem much they can learn about their bodies and quite frankly visitors are giving a generation angle where visitors’re favorite — hey, look, visitors should be able to track our hormones so of that [women] with been excluded from research for all those years and if that only visitors had been included visitors would with known This Problem much again about medication, our bodies, everything around that. This Problem let’s bridge that gap — that’s our mission. And at with the too time they’re favorite This Problem is most great but what exactly can visitors do for me?” says Rapit.

“This Problem the way visitors’ve been approaching it — what I can tell visitors works — is to be very precise on what convenience they can get. And that’s why Instagram and influencer marketing works so of that women get the chance to ask questions and to really clarify if that This Problem will serve them or not.”

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