The Lowdown team from left to right: Georgia Gallant (Content lead), Alice Pelton (Founder & CEO), Marija Ziterbart (CTO), Dani Conlon (Community lead) and Phoeby Narenthiran (Design)

• Round is led by Speedinvest who are joining existing investors Nina Capital, Calm/Storm VC, Entrepreneur First and four Atomico Angels
• The Lowdown is the UK’s leading sexual and reproductive health platform, visited by 70,000 women every month
• It was founded by Alice Pelton after suffering debilitating side effects from her contraception throughout her twenties. 78% of the 1 billion people worldwide who use contraception, experience side effects. 
• The funds will be used to invest in commercial and product hires and expand their unique community-first proposition across Europe

London-based femtech startup The Lowdown has closed a $2.5m seed round to supercharge its community centred female health platform. 

Alongside health tech VC, Nina Capital, the round was led by the pan-European VC, Speedinvest. The Lowdown marks Speedinvest’s first investment in the female health tech space with plans to further invest in this market.

Andrea Zitna, who leads the health team at Speedinvest is joining The Lowdown’s board. She said: “The time to invest in Women’s reproductive health is now. Alice’s ability to build community, content, and tools that women love but have never had access to is second- to-none. Contraception is just the start of The Lowdown’s bold vision in Women’s health and we are thrilled to be supporting them on it!”

Nina Capital are The Lowdown’s 2021 pre-seed investors and are doubling down on their initial investment, and so are Calm/Storm VC. 

Marta Gaia Zanchi, Founder & Managing Partner at Nina Capital said: “Under Alice’s passionate leadership, The Lowdown has proven to meet the need to give women of reproductive age a voice, guidance, the choice, and ultimately access to a method of contraception. With this round, we build on this strong foundation. Investing in women’s health is more urgent than ever, and we are proud of The Lowdown’s work towards bringing their offer to a growing community—not only in the UK but also internationally, starting with Germany.”

The Lowdown’s backers include four of the 2021 cohort of the Atomico angel programme, GoCardless Co Founder Matt Robinson and ex Songkick Co Founder Ian Hogarth. The company was first backed by accelerator Entrepreneur First in 2020. They are now joined by angel investors including Catherine Lenson (Softbank), Dorothy Chou (DeepMind) and Scott Mackin (Denham Capital). 

About The Lowdown:

The Lowdown is the UK’s leading reproductive and sexual health platform. Powered by community, advice and prescriptions, they use their unique community-first approach to put women in control of their healthcare decisions. 

The startup was founded in 2019 after founder Alice Pelton suffered debilitating side effects from her contraception throughout her twenties. Frustrated by the lack of clinical data and poor quality of the advice she received, Alice bootstrapped and built The Lowdown’s contraception review platform to help women like her share and compare their experiences. 

It went viral and has built an engaged community and following that has generated over 5,000 reviews on people’s lived experiences with over 85 every method and brands of contraception.

Last year The Lowdown launched the UK’s first private contraception consultation service via their team of remote expert GPs, and have since expanded the service to include sex coaching and pelvic health physios. 

The team has developed a suite of digital tools that are used by thousands of women every week, including a contraception recommendation algorithm based on their review data and clinical evidence. These tools are combined with seamless next-day delivery of the widest range of contraceptives in the UK including the contraceptive pill, patch, ring, injection and morning after pill.

Alice leads an 8 person team based in Southwark, and will use the seed raise to invest in key commercial and product hires and expand The Lowdown’s proposition to more women across Europe. The new hires will join CTO Marija Ziterbart, and Medical Directors Dr Melanie Davis-Hall and Dr Frances Yarlett.

Alice says ‘The Lowdown’s success speaks to how underserved women are worldwide when it comes to understanding and navigating things like their contraceptive options. Everything we do is about listening to women and building what they want, because very few companies are really listening.’ 

‘Fundraising for this type of business is really hard. But I’m delighted that Speedinvest are joining us in our journey to bring contraception and women’s reproductive health into the digital and social age. It’s rare to find a VC like Andrea with experience in building and scaling a women’s health startup, and I’m really excited to be working with her and the Speedinvest team’

Website: www.thelowdown.com

Social: Instagram /  TikTok / Twitter

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Seed investors:

Speedinvest (co-lead)

Nina Capital (co-lead, doubling down on 2021 pre-seed investment)

Calm/Storm VC (doubling down on 2021 pre-seed investment)

Notable seed angels:

Catherine Lenson (Softbank) and Jonathan Lenson (Milltown Partners)

Dorothy Chou (DeepMind) 

Scott Mackin (Denham Capital)

Other notable existing investors who invested in $600k pre-seed in 2021:

Sarah Drinkwater – ex Google maps

Matt Robinson – Co Founder GoCardless, CEO Nested

Ian Hogarth – Co Founder Songkick

Entrepreneur First (Funded as part of LD14 cohort in 2020)