The largest seed round for female founders in Australian history has been achieved, with health-tech startup Human announcing they have raised $10.15 million.
The record comes according to stats shared on Crunchbase and AirTree, and highlights a significant win for all female-led startups, a cohort that continues to receive just a tiny fraction of the share of funding of their male counterparts.
The founders Kate Lambridis and Georgia Vidler, met at Canva, where Georgia was the Head of Product, and Kate was the Senior Product Manager. They’ve brought on some of the country’s most high-profile investors, with direct support from women including Elicia McDonald who led the round, as well as Skip Capital, which is the investment office for Kim Jackson.
The founders are on a mission to transform how healthcare is delivered, potentially supporting millions of people in the process. In just six months, the pair have hired a team of 18 across multiple fields, and they’re hiring many more. Meanwhile, they’re well into the process of building their beta product.
Lambridis and Vidler bring significant product experience into this new business, but also their own frustrations at struggling to find quality information for complex health conditions for themselves, as well as for family members. They came up with the idea to give everyone access to personalised healthcare, with the software platform learning which treatments work for different individuals, in real-time. Human has committed to publish their findings, in real-time, for free – to ultimately help doctors and patients build personalised treatment plans.
As Lambridis said on the mission: “We want to speed up science, and empower doctors and patients to make more data-driven decisions.
“We are building this product alongside clinicians and scientists across the world who see Human as a way to share their learnings and research with as many people as possible.”
Elicia McDonald said on the business and its founders that “great ideas know no limits.”
She said that Human has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people who suffer from symptoms associated with chronic conditions.
“Both Georgia and Kate have experience building great products and have a deep connection to the problem space through personal experience. Their commitment and their ability to inspire top talent, supporters, and advisors to join them, is a huge competitive advantage. We feel privileged to support them in making their vision a reality.”
Meanwhile, Kim Jackson noted Human’s enormous potential for impact.
“Healthcare is not known to have great user experiences — and product-led thinking is what healthcare systems globally desperately need.”