French startup Solence, an app that helps women suffering from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), has raised €1.6 million in Seed funding to deepen product functionality and expanding the team.
This round included Impact Shakers Ventures, and angel investors including Founder of Leetchi, Mangopay and Resilience Céline Lazorthes, former JP Morgan Berthe Latreille, Systemanova VC Founder Stephane Mardel and BPI France.
Founder Clara Stephenson said: ”PCOS is one of the great blind spots in women’s healthcare. It’s time to change that. Ultimately, our vision is to leverage data and environmental factors to better address chronic hormonal conditions among women, with a focus on prevention and improving their healthy life expectancy. This first round is a step towards realising this vision.”
Solence was founded by Clara Stephenson in 2022 with the mission to make personalised and patient-centric care available to all women with PCOS, a prevalent hormonal condition among women. Solence’s ultimate vision is to increase healthy life expectancy for women by reducing the burden of chronic conditions with lifestyle-based and AI-powered therapeutics.
The former Ernst Young (EY) corporate lawyer and Founder of the French PCOS blog Les Natives, was also diagnosed with the condition and is what drove her to create Solence. Despite showing what she describes as ‘textbook’ symptoms of the condition, it remained undiagnosed for some 10 years until investigations into her struggling to conceive a child.
At this point, Clara was hit with both the news that she had an incurable, chronic health condition and that she may never be able to have a child.
During the COVID pandemic, Clara had time to begin Les Natives. In this blog, Clara shared her experiences of PCOS, which grew into a health and wellness site seeking to inspire women to promote their hormonal balance. The site received over 135,000 visits, with a committed online following of over 8,000 people. Following this positive response, Stephenson founded Solence.
Solence’s first product is a patient app designed to help relieve PCOS symptoms “beyond the pill” through personalised lifestyle intervention.
Yonca Breackman, Founding Partner Impact Shakers Ventures, says: “We backed Clara and Solence not only because PCOS is a condition that affects 1 in 7 women and can have serious consequences for women’s health and wellbeing, but also because Clara brings a unique perspective, experience and network to solving this challenge and scaling a solution that has the potential to reach hundreds of millions of women to improve their quality of life.”
PCOS is a hormonal imbalance originating from the ovaries and the central system, leading to excessive production of testosterone, irregular periods, infertility and metabolic syndrome.
Up to 20% of women globally suffer from the condition, but some 85% don’t receive the support they need. Symptoms of PCOS vary from weight gain, irregular periods, excessive hair growth, painful stomach cramps, as well as struggles with mental health. Over 85% experience markedly reduced quality of life, and half of them say that it makes work difficult. Routine PCOS care relies massively on pharmacotherapy, while evidence-based guidelines recommend lifestyle and behavioural interventions as top priority treatment with clinically proven therapeutic benefits.
To address these gaps, Solence provides digital-led PCOS care tailored to every woman’s high heterogeneity of PCOS expressions, while harnessing data insights to reshape the way PCOS healthcare is delivered.
The app offers a twelve-week programme rooted in peer-reviewed research that demonstrates the effectiveness of lifestyle intervention on symptoms, fertility and quality of life of women with PCOS. It provides interactive lessons to reverse PCOS symptoms with lifestyle changes, combining biomedical knowledge and the latest in habit-formation science.
The app also generates monthly PCOS assessment scores to map problem areas and triggers for symptoms, as well as advice and resources on how to avoid them in the future.
Professor Michel Pugeat has been involved in diagnosing and treating PCOS since 2003 and is a member of Solence’s scientific committee alongside neuroscience researcher Dr Nour Mimouni. Pugeat commented: “The general public needs information on PCOS, whose multitude of clinical expressions and the complexity of the causes, intertwined with the metabolic state, justify management by all health professionals, but also the search for new innovative and essential therapeutic approaches, such as that of Solence.”
The treatment of PCOS is proving a problematic topic across Europe. Over-expensive treatment options are preventing sufferers from receiving the help they need, with some out of-pocket for over €3,500. There have even been instances of online influencers selling fake PCOS cures, taking advantage of young followers experiencing the condition.
Entrepreneur, activist and Founder of Mangopay Céline Lazorthes, added: “I’m extremely happy to invest in and support Solence. PCOS is a silent plague that Clara and her team are tackling head-on!”
In the near term, Clara and the team will be using the funds to develop the Solence app and programme further, strengthen their clinical partnerships, and support distribution strategies, on their mission to improve the lives of millions of women with their PCOS digital therapeutics.
