Building the future of women’s health with Pollie
Make Studios invests in healthtech startup Pollie to support women in their journey navigating complex chronic conditions.
There’s a problem that impacts an estimated 80% of women that can result in physical and mental health challenges like reproductive, digestive, and autoimmune disorders. And 70% of affected women go undiagnosed. The root of this problem is hormonal imbalance, and Pollie, an exciting new healthtech startup, is on a mission to support women through diagnosing, managing, and treating related symptoms.
Founded by two women, Pollie is the single support source for women dealing with complex chronic conditions. After struggling with hair loss and acne in college, Co-founder Jane Sagui, who has a background in management consulting and VC, was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). After months of consulting with her primary care physician and several OBGYNs, the best solution she could find was to temporarily alleviate symptoms with hormonal birth control and and then wait to see if she experienced fertility issues later in life, at which point she could seek out more intensive care.
Not satisfied with this status quo, Jane did her own research to manage her symptoms and learned that while PCOS is the leading cause of infertility, it’s not just a fertility disorder — it’s a whole-body chronic condition that impacts 10% of women and greatly increases the risk for diabetes, heart disease, estrogen-related cancers, and mental health issues. It can result in numerous seemingly unrelated symptoms including menstrual irregularity and infertility, insulin resistance and weight gain, and anxiety and depression.
Western medicine’s current heavy-handed answer to dealing with PCOS is to prescribe pharmaceuticals (e.g., birth control for regulating cycles, metformin for addressing insulin resistance), which do not fully address the issue and can come with their own negative side effects. But Jane’s self-guided exploration led to the discovery that by taking a functional approach to managing her symptoms — with diet and lifestyle tweaks — she was able to address her PCOS and re-balance her hormones.
Jane joined forces with Co-founder Sabrina Mason, who has worked in public health as well as operational and product roles at healthtech companies. Sabrina has experience working with medical providers and is passionate about bringing transparency and access to healthcare. Now the team is scaling a modern, wholistic approach to give women the support they deserve.
At Make Studios, we’re proud to invest in Pollie and we’re excited to build alongside Jane, Sabrina, and the team to move thier important mission forward. Better experiences for women’s health are long overdue and major shifts, both technological (telehealth, SaaS) as well as cultural (direct-to-consumer health services, community), have created a huge market opportunity that we’re confident Pollie is going to leverage toward great success.
Learn more about Pollie (beta list signup!) on their official website and definitely follow them on Instagram for 🔥 content about women’s health.
Make Studios is a venture studio that partners with idea-stage founders to build scalable tech startups. Leveraging a 15-person team that thrives on execution, we take companies from idea to customer revenue in 6 months or less.
If you’re a pre-product founder and software is core to your business, apply today so we can explore working together. Let’s build!
