Saint Paul based startups Herself Health and Cadre were selected among the 10 Minne Inno 2024 startups to watch.
Funding slowed in 2023 after a couple solid years of sustained growth, but many Minnesota startups are still poised to weather the storm.
Startups based in Minnesota raised about $725 million in venture-backed funding last year, a 44% drop from the $1.3 billion raised in 2022, according to a Minne Inno analysis of Crunchbase data that includes pre-seed, seed, series, venture, angel and convertible note funding rounds.
While it’s been a tough year for some, other startups saw massive successes. Niron Magnetics, a previous startup to watch, made Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2023 list while Ecolab Inc. and Techstars finally brought a local company on to their Farm to Fork accelerator.
Fledgling med-tech companies brought new treatments online, ecosystem boosters have built up infrastructure to help other startups achieve success, and founders have brought their sustainability efforts toward commercialization.
View the full list of Minne Inno’s 10 startups to watch in 2024.
Herself Health
St. Paul-based women’s health care provider Herself Health opened three clinics in its first full year of existence.
The startup, which launched in 2022, is focused on providing care to women over 65. It brought home $33 million across two fundraising rounds in its first full year. Those funds will help it expand its workforce, virtual care and community engagement offerings.
Herself Health’s services address a variety of health and wellness issues, such as mobility, social isolation, mental health, bone health, heart health and brain health.
Its locations are in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, southwest Minneapolis and Crystal. The southwest Minneapolis location at 5450 Lyndale Ave. S. opened in December, well ahead of schedule.
Last summer, Herself Health said it was eyeing potential expansion to one market beyond the Twin Cities in 2024.
“In the few months since our launch, the incredible interest from patients clearly demonstrates that this model was desperately needed,” CEO and co-founder Kristen Helton said in a statement last summer.
Cadre
Luke Wendlandt successfully built up addiction-recovery program Northstar Behavioral Health, and now he’s in his third year building Cadre.
The St. Paul-based mental health and wellness app offers on-demand content for people who are struggling with their mental health. During the 2022 Twin Cities Startup Week, the company won the Emerging Startup and Bootstrapper awards at the Minnesota Startup Awards.
The company is on the heels of a year of building — “learning, pivoting, iterating and gaining a clearer understanding of our customer needs,” Wendlandt wrote in an email.
Cadre plans to use 2024 to dive deeper into market segments that demand more mental health services. Wendlandt said the company has identified areas of growth for its current platform, including caregivers of all kinds, people living with disabilities, and those who are facing grief and loss.
“We are poised to impact more lives than ever in 2024, and that’s what we’re here to do,” Wendlandt wrote.