👩🏻💻 topi Raises $45M to Innovate the B2B Subscription Economy
FemWealth Issue #76
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
In the Spotlight 👩🏻💻
topi, a Berlin-based startup co-founded by Charlotte Pallua and Estelle Merle, has launched its hardware-as-a-service platform to enable businesses to rent tech equipment instead of owning it. It gives its customers access to the latest technology and eases their cash flow while reducing electronic waste and helping to create a circular economy.
“In light of climate change, being sustainable is increasingly important for companies. Used devices should be given a second life or properly recycled — a drawer full of old devices should no longer exist.” - Charlotte Pallua
topi’s co-founders have met at Harvard Business School and have previously held leadership roles in hardware subscriptions at Apple and SaaS at Goldman Sachs. Half of the startup’s leadership team and 60% of its tech team is female.
The company has recently raised $45 million in equity ($15m) and debt financing, in a series A round co-led by Index Ventures (by partner Julia Andre) and Creandum.
Read more: Topi raises $45M to power hardware subscriptions for B2B merchants (TechCrunch)
topi launches its hardware subscription platform (Index Ventures)
FemWealth Favourites ❤️
💸 Apricity, a London-based virtual fertility clinic co-founded and led by Caroline Noublanche, has raised €17 million ($16.91m) in Series B funding.
💸 Astro emerges from stealth to connect Latin American developers with US tech companies - The company co-founded and led by Jacqueline Samira came out of stealth with a $13M Series A round.
💸 Kenyan fintech Pezesha raises $11M backed by Women's World Banking, Cardano parent IOG - Founded and led by Hilda Moraa, Pezesha enables traditional and non-traditional finance institutions to offer working capital to small medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) across Africa. The startup also plans to open up more lending opportunities for women entrepreneurs who are locked out by the formal banking sector.
💸 It’s not a DAO, it's a Koop: 21-year-old founder raises $5M for NFT fan engagement - Koop, co-founded by Natalia Murillo, is a protocol that helps creators and communities launch NFT-based membership passes to raise funds for projects.
“We participate in fictional worlds or digital communities with more fervence and passion than our local democracies, and so I felt like there was a big disconnect in terms of what communities were offering to the amount of time and investment I shared with them.” - Natalia Murillo
💸 This founder wants to take on the biggest coaching startups with a group-focused approach - Nishika de Rosairo, the founder and CEO of HumanQ, aims to make group coaching an impactful alternative to 1:1 coaching. The startup has raised a $2 million seed round led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from angel investors.
“We believe that organizations and individuals’ growth is not about the individual’s agenda and what they need — it’s about the organization’s agenda relative to groups of people who are going to have to collaborate together.” - Nishika de Rosairo
💸 With schools increasingly focused on mental health, PsycApps raises seed round for US expansion - The UK-based startup, co-founded by Silja Litvin and Vanessa Hirsch-Angus, has developed an “evidence-based gamified mental health game for teens and young adults.” It has raised a $1.7 seed round from US-based Morningside Ventures to fuel its growth and US expansion.
💸 How to fundraise a Series A - A guide by Jenny Lefcourt, a seed-stage investor at Freestyle | Also read Jenny’s Learn to Love Fundraising
“A seed is often raised solely on a founder’s big vision, whereas a Series A typically needs a big vision and business traction, especially in the current market.” - Jenny Lefcourt
👶 Two raises and a baby: How founders with kids get it done
Tech & VC: 👩🏾💻 The Tech Sector Has a Diversity Problem. Now What? One woman’s quest to bring new people and perspectives into the tech industry - Features June Angelides, founder of Mums in Tech and an early-stage investor at Samos VC
“We need more diversity of thought, and more products built for women by women. The more women we have building these technologies, the better.”
“The young girls out there making decisions about what to study—when they don’t see that representation, they won’t be inclined to choose a career in tech. It’s important to shine a light on great women building great businesses.” - June Angelides
Women’s Health: 🩸 A Free Period-Tracking App That Doesn't Sell Your Data - Check out Drip, an open source, gender inclusive, secure, and science-based period tracking app, developed by a collective of volunteer coders in Berlin and initiated by Marie Kochsiek. The app doesn’t transmit any of a user’s data to remote servers, instead storing it entirely on the device.
🏃🏽♀️ How a femtech app is using A.I. to fill in the gaps for women’s health care - Features Hélène Guillaume, CEO and founder of Wild.ai, an app for active women which analyzes their vitals and performance in order to make training, recovery, and nutritional recommendations specifically adapted to their physiology.
“A thirtysomething-year-old woman taking birth control is unlikely to have the same vitals, such as resting heart rate, body temperature, or bone density, as a woman in perimenopause, a woman beginning menopause, or even a woman in the midst of menstruating. Hormones greatly impact their athletic performance, and yet their variety of needs hasn’t been served.” - Hélène Guillaume
📚 The ovarian “biological clock” and other reproductive health metaphors that have led science astray - An insightful interview with Rachel Gross, a science reporter and author of the book Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage | 🎧 Also listen to the podcast Can ovaries make new eggs?
Economics & Politics: 🇯🇵 Activist Investor’s Daughter Wants More Women in Japan Politics - Rei Murakami launched a scholarship program (including funding) to help aspiring lawmakers. The initiative aims to teach the ins and outs of politics to women in their teens through their 30s. Currently, women comprise just 9.7% of the lower house of Japan’s parliament - far below the global average of 26.1%; Japan ranks 165th out of 188 countries.
“When there’s diversity in parliament, there’s diversity in policy. Female politicians tend to focus on childcare, education, elderly care -- things that are closely tied to our daily lives.”
Sports: 🎾 What Serena Williams Gave the World
“She helped change behavioral expectations for female athletes, and by extension women in all workplaces, by exuding power and passion—and bringing her full self—to her hard-court office. She rewrote the book on body image.”
Aslo read Serena Williams showed the world that black women excel. That has changed us all
⚽ Record-breaking 2022 Women’s Euro watched by 365 million globally - The 2022 Women’s European Championship was the most watched edition of the tournament with a projected global cumulative live viewership of 365 million, more than double the number in the 2017 edition (178m) and 214% higher than in 2013 (116m). It has also generated 453.3m cumulative social interactions, with TikTok and Twitter driving most of the engagement. Times are changing! 👏
🏋️🏽♀️ ‘Strong over skinny’: Women powerlifters ditch stigma around bulking up
Food & Drink Industry: 🍸 Meet Kate Gerwin, Owner of America’s Best New Cocktail Bar for 2022 - Features Kate Gerwin, founder of Happy Accidents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and winner of one of the top prizes at the 2022 Spirited Awards.
Relationships: 🥰 Our struggle creating lasting relationships is not our fault, but we can do something about it, famed therapist Esther Perel says
“It is the quality of our relationships that will determine the quality of our lives. But relationships are harder to measure, harder to sustain, harder to evaluate in the way that we like to evaluate other work outcomes.” - Esther Perel
What I’m Reflecting On 💭
Skipped Health Care Visits May Have Caused More Than 100,000 Maternal And Child Deaths In Vulnerable Countries During Pandemic, Study Finds - The declines in essential health care visits may have caused an estimated 113,962 avoidable deaths, including 110,686 children under the age of 5, and 3,276 mothers, representing a 3.6% increase in child mortality and a 1.5% rise in maternal mortality. The highest increases were registered in Bangladesh, Haiti, Kenya and Nigeria.
Why depression in women is so misunderstood - Women are twice as likely to experience depression than men are. The incidence of depression in women peaks in the years around menopause. Even though menopausal depression takes a huge toll, it continues to be underfunded and under-researched.
“(...) inattention to menopausal depression reflects the systemic sexism that pervades biomedical research, which manifests as a lack of funding into research and services for women’s health more generally.” - Jayashri Kulkarni, director of HER Centre Australia — a Monash University Centre in Melbourne dedicated to women’s mental health.
Thank you for reading FemWealth! 🥰 Wish you a lovely Sunday and an excellent week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth