Our Investment in Millie: Modernizing Maternity Care
We are proud to announce our investment in Millie, a new, mother-first model for maternity care. Millie’s comprehensive program addresses every aspect of childbirth at every step of the way, providing invaluable guidance and optimizing maternal success, a highly intuitive, cost-effective, and accessible solution for pregnancy care.
About 3.7 million babies are born per year in the US, and in 2020, $100 billion was spent on pregnancy and childbirth — the most out of all industrialized nations. Yet the burden of American maternal care is put entirely on the mother, with very little guidance or structure, resulting in a disjointed system where mothers only get assistance during infrequent 30-minute checkups, practically no postpartum help, and the additional stress of navigating a confusing payor system. Seeing as the US has more than double the rate of maternal mortality than that of other developed countries and also leads with an all-time high rate of preterm births, it’s obvious that the current system is long overdue for disruption.
Enter Millie. Millie’s innovative model delivers comprehensive, wrap-around maternal care. It starts with in-person clinic visits and prenatal services like ultrasounds, blood lab work, routine exams, genetic screening, doula and midwife support, birth plan construction and review, and STI screening and vaccinations.
Each Millie patient also has access to their extensive suite of virtual care and resources: The Millie app guides the patient along every step of pregnancy, with a checklist of appointments, educational resources, community support, and direct lines of contact to extensive maternity health professionals such as OBs, doulas, and nutritionists. Millie works with mothers to create a detailed, personalized birth plan and matches them with a midwife or doula to their birth center partner. After the birth, patients are provided with a postpartum home visit, infant feeding and newborn care guidance, in-person check-ups, a review of mental health needs, lactation consulting, and regular gynecological care.
CEO and co-founder Anu Sharma has pulled together a team of seasoned maternity experts with very strong referral networks. Anu’s background is rooted in the health insurance industry; she most recently served as VP on the founding executive team of Burd Health after pursuing an MBA from Stanford GSB. Prior, Anu worked as a Principal for seven years at Booz & Co. in M&A and operational improvements for national health plans and large health systems. She started Millie after she experienced the flaws in the US maternal health system firsthand. Anu has assembled a team of maternal health experts. Cofounder/Clinical Director Talia Borgo is a certified midwife with clinical experience at Sutter Health, UCSF Medicine, & Planned Parenthood, and cofounder/CTO Sarah Renolds has a decade of experience in operational health systems, most recently serving as Senior Director of Engineering at Omada Health. Medical Director Amy Kane has over 14 years of OBGYN practice at Sutter Health, LifeLong Medical Care, and OakCare Medical Group.
We’re excited to see how Millie expands from its initial location in the Bay Area and are thrilled to literally make an investment in generations to come — Millie will be a life-changing solution for the millions of mothers currently being failed by US healthcare.
By Investment Associate Jenna Jung
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