Thirty Madison Secures $15.25M Series A to Launch Cove, an End-to-End Migraine Care Platform

On October 17, 2018, VCBeat (WeChat ID: VCbeat) learned that Thirty Madison had completed a $15.25 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Maveron and Northzone, with participation from Greycroft, Steadfast Venture Capital, First Round, Entrepreneurs Roundtable, HillCour, and Two Rivers. Previously, Thirty Madison had raised $7.5 million in seed funding in November 2017.

It is reported that the primary uses of Thirty Madison’s latest funding round include: continuing to advance Keeps, its first FDA-cleared hair loss treatment platform; further enhancing the customer care experience, including through telemedicine consultations with independently practicing physicians; launching Cove, a direct-to-consumer healthcare platform offering personalized treatment solutions for migraine patients; and continuing to recruit members and expand the team.

Keeps is the first end-to-end platform launched by Thirty Madison, which combines expert diagnosis to provide patients with affordable treatment, real-time patient care, disease management, and assistance in managing chronic health conditions. Through the platform, users can consult online doctors about their hair loss, and the doctors then provide users with a 90-day supply of FDA-approved treatments via mail. Users can directly order hair loss prevention medications, finasteride and minoxidil, online through Keeps. By partnering with pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell drugs directly to consumers, Keeps reduces medication costs, offering online prices that are only half those of local pharmacies. The cost of ordering the over-the-counter topical treatment minoxidil on Keeps is $10 per month, while the prescription drug finasteride costs $25 per month. Since its launch in January 2018, Keeps has achieved a monthly business growth rate of 60%.

The early and immediate success of Keeps has demonstrated that this model can be leveraged and extended to the treatment of other conditions. Thirty Madison’s second platform, Cove, follows a similar model to Keeps, offering users virtual consultations with physicians, tracking their migraine progression, and then delivering personalized treatment plans and prescriptions via mail.

According to the Migraine Research Foundation, migraine is the third most prevalent disease worldwide. In the United States, 12% of the population (approximately 39 million people) suffers from migraines, including 18% of women and 6% of men. Despite this, medical expertise and treatment options for migraines have not been widely disseminated. Fewer than 50% of migraine patients engage in treatment, and 86% discontinue therapy within one year due to a lack of self-management skills for ongoing care. Although established treatments for migraines exist, it is challenging to determine a durable treatment regimen due to variations in symptom severity, physical condition, and lifestyle habits among patients. Furthermore, barriers to insurance coverage make it difficult for patients to find suitable and affordable treatment options.

Migraine (Image from foreign media)

Steven Gutentag, co-founder of Thirty Madison, stated in a press release: “Most young adults do not have a primary care physician. With soaring healthcare costs, an increasing number of patients are approaching treatment with a consumer mindset, yet health insurance still fails to meet their care needs. At Thirty Madison, we aim to change this status quo by reimagining the insurance experience and providing higher-quality, more affordable services to our members. Both my co-founder Demetri Karagas and I have witnessed the remarkable impact of Keeps, and we expect Cove to achieve similar success.”

Currently, some digital health companies have begun to focus on medications for treating migraines. Healint, a digital health startup specializing in headaches, is collaborating with Novartis on a study primarily investigating the link between migraines and anxiety and depression.

Thirty Madison is a healthcare company based in New York, USA, specializing in the treatment of hair loss and migraines. The company’s vision is to rebuild the healthcare experience for modern consumers. Currently, it operates two subsidiaries: Keeps, which focuses on male pattern hair loss, and Cove, which specializes in migraine treatment.