Shortly after the mass layoffs, the Berlin startup completed a new round of millions. With this, Clue wants to master the path to break-even.
The Berlin startup Clue has closed a new round of financing. Previous shareholders such as the London fund Balderton Capital and Union Square Ventures from New York have added around seven million euros.
Clue was founded in late 2012 by Danish Ida Tin and offers women a cycle tracking app. According to the startup, around eleven million women worldwide use the app, from teenagers to menopause. In the calendar tool, you enter the days on which you menstruate and what symptoms you have during the cycle. For a monthly fee of 9.99 euros, users receive a premium version, i.e. longer advance planning of the next cycles and receptive days. About two percent of Clue users would take advantage of this subscription model, says Co-CEO Carrie Walter on the Gründerszene.
Sales in the seven-digit range
While the number of free profiles is hardly increasing – according to Clue, the mark of eleven million users has been reached Forbes already achieved in 2019 – the start-up is noticing growth, at least among paying customers. According to the balance sheet, the Berlin femtech company turned over more than four million euros in 2021, an increase of 76 percent. Last year it was almost seven million euros, says co-CEO Walter. According to the annual report, a doubling was targeted, but Clue did not achieve this goal. In 2023, however, sales should be twice as high.
Two years ago, the loss was over six million euros. The company will not be able to break even this year, but the financing should pave the way for it. “We don’t want to use the money to scale up massively,” says co-CEO Audrey Tsang. “We want to prove that this business model can work.”
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In order to improve the app, the company also wants to allow crowd investors. The two managing directors have not set themselves a goal, they say. “We’re venturing into uncharted territory,” adds Walter. Private investors can participate with amounts between ten euros and 100,000 euros – under the same conditions as the VCs. So you don’t expect an annual success rate, but a profit payment in the event of an exit. For Clue, the campaign is not just a lever for marketing and financing, the crowd investors should be able to vote on product changes and contribute suggestions for improvement.
The two co-CEOs Tsang and Walter took over the posts in the summer of 2021 after having been employed by the company for several years. In order to take your tracking app to a new level, you need a manager with far more and different expertise, justified Ida Tin then her resignation. The Clue founder now advises the duo as chairwoman of the board, is writing a book about entrepreneurship and works as a coach for young founding teams.
A lot has happened since the change in leadership at Clue: A few weeks later, the startup closed an extended Series C for 16 million euros. In May 2022, three previous shareholders, including Balderton Capital, put another 5.8 million euros into Clue. Now the next round of internal financing follows – shortly after the company laid off a quarter of its workforce.
The femtech startup announced this decision in January. “Like many companies, we hired more employees than we made sales, which is not sustainable in the current environment,” the company said at the time. Clue laid off 31 people and hasn’t hired any new staff since then, says Tsang. And that’s not planned for the foreseeable future. The team currently has around 90 employees. With them, the company wants to prove that femtech business models are sustainable and can work profitably.
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