As co-founder of the well-regarded health-tech venture capital firm Rock Health, Halle Tecco is a big name in the digital health world. And now she’s turned her attention to a startup of her own: a women’s health-focused company called Natalist.
The idea came from Tecco’s own experience. While trying to get pregnant, she found herself constantly “running around” the drugstore. Everything she needed was in a different aisle, and when she brought the products home they didn’t fit in a bathroom cabinet and they lacked the streamlined design of the beauty products she bought.
With her experiences and frustrations in mind, Tecco set out to create Natalist, a subscription box containing pregnancy and fertility products that are easy to use, backed by science, and stigma-free.
Tecco says there’s “a lot of misinformation, a lot of secrecy and shame” around fertility—or lack thereof. The idea of Natalist’s service is “to help people that are just starting to try and understand that the journey can look a million different ways.”
Natalist’s first subscription offering is a “Get Pregnant” bundle whose products change as a woman progresses through the fertility journey and continues on until birth. The first month includes an illustrated Conception 101 guidebook that helps women understand the basics of human reproduction and offers practical tips on getting pregnant. The bundles will also include items such as ovulation tests or prenatal vitamins.
“Everything you need is right here in one box versus having to frantically look through drugstore aisles,” Tecco told Fast Company. And, she says, that’s what women want.
And she should know. When she ran Rock Health, she invested in a number of female-founded health companies including EverlyWell, KindBody, and Tia.
Natalist’s website features materials on conception and pregnancy that come from both medical and lifestyle perspectives. It also has a list of things the company won’t sell—such as gender prediction tests and fertility crystals—because they don’t stand the test of science.
Although Tecco’s new role is a lot more demanding than her career as a VC, she is excited to bring her vision of empowerment to the pregnancy sector.
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