How this maternal-health founder closed a round while postpartum

Anne Wanlund is the founder and CEO of Canopie, a prevention-focused maternal health company supporting women with evidence-based programs during pregnancy and postpartum. The company recently raised a $3.7 million seed round co-led by Beta Boom and Aeroflow Health. Additional investors included Techstars, the Sorenson Institute, Symphonic Capital, Luminary Impact Fund, and a family office.

Anne started raising her company’s round while in her third trimester and closed the round postpartum. We caught up with Anne to hear about her fundraising journey. 

Highlights

• Finding the right mix of investors 

• Fundraising while pregnant 

• Maintaining strong investor relationships 

• Taking time to celebrate the wins 

CARTA: Tell us about your approach for this seed round. What was your strategy going into the fundraise? 

ANNE WANLUND: As far as timing, I was trying to balance starting the raise with progress towards a major partnership. I really wanted to show investors this traction, because of how important it is to show measurable progress between rounds. 

That said, I want to be really honest, just in case there are other new moms out there who are reading this: I wanted the timing to be perfect to showcase this big partnership, but then I got into my late third trimester and early postpartum while I was raising money. Which was really, really hard. So the rationale made sense in a “normal” fundraising scenario, but was very hard for me and my family, and hard on Canopie.

It had been four years since I had last been pregnant. And in that time, I'd really forgotten how difficult it is to find any semblance of balance, despite the fact that I work in this field and on all of these issues that I’ve faced myself. It was extraordinarily challenging. I think it’s always difficult to balance the traction of your company with personal timing, especially if you have a huge thing going on in your life, like a new baby and a little one at home. 

But when I started fundraising, I began with talking with our existing investors, and then more generally folks who are interested in women's health and those who are engaged in digital health. After initial conversations, I experienced something a lot of founders do, which is trouble keeping up business momentum. So there was interest generally, but not necessarily that many who were like, “This is the right timing for me, this is the right round for me, and I’m ready to invest right now.” Keeping different types of momentum up in the early days is a Sisyphean effort.

Given all this, the raise ended up being a longer process than what you might assume. Some of the relationships I’ve been building since the start of Canopie. Our process hasn’t felt at all what I’ve heard people describe, like when people say, “It generally takes six months to raise a round.” Some of the seed participants had already put money in, then invested more. Some of the new investors were people I’d kept in touch with and had seen our progress. Others were new to Canopie, but not new to mental health or mission-driven companies.

In the end, finding investors who believed in our particular approach, and that we had what it took to get to the next level, got me the momentum I needed to close the round. These are people who really believe in our model, not just our financial model and our ability to scale, but also how we were approaching the issue and the impact we’re trying to create. And that is critical, because it means the investors we have around the table understand how we make decisions and why we make decisions, and I never have to feel like that is in question. It establishes trust and alignment early on.

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So the investors that you ended up partnering with, were they more impact investors, with a double-bottom-line approach?

We have a total mix. I love it. We had every facet of Canopie represented in the final part of our seed raise. We've got a strategic maternal healthcare investor, they're wonderful and so helpful. We have a SaaS digital health investor. Those were our co-leads. Then we had a family-focused mental health impact fund, a general impact fund, a mental health-focused family office, and another tech investor focused on healthcare.

So it sounds like when it comes to your board meetings you have a diverse braintrust around the table. 

Yes, for sure. I have the comfort of knowing that there's an understanding of our approach and this work. But it’s also been helpful to have investors with different strengths and backgrounds. I go to our investors for things I know they can help me with, which also means really getting to know them has been important. 

After the investment is made, how do you continue to develop and nourish those relationships? 

The main way I stay connected to our investors is through phone calls one to two times a month–also quick texts and emails. And sometimes more frequently, for some who are a little bit more involved in the business and understand the day-to-day.

It's both a strength and something that's special to me, but also a challenge because at this stage you're just constantly trying to find more hours in the day. There's tension between just getting what you need to done day-to-day and communicating the progress, the challenges, and the vision. And then there’s this amazing group of people who have come in to support you and believe in you, and you need to make sure you're updating them and also using them effectively. I won't lie, it's incredibly challenging, and I don’t think it’s something I’m naturally good at. 

But I have been very transparent, honest, and authentic. Our investors know the good, the hard…they've seen under the hood. Even if we’re not doing a good job on something, they know I'll be the one to tell them; they don't have to figure it out some other way.

They are there to help in the hard times, but also to celebrate the good times. One of my investors, a big part of how he sees his role is making sure that I'm celebrating the wins, because he always thinks I'm being too hard on myself. And so it's become a funny little part of all of our calls, him reminding me, wait, don't forget to celebrate the wins.

Tell me more about that growth. What are your plans for the money you raised? 

This year we put in place a lot of the infrastructure to support personalized care and to deepen and expand the services we’re offering. So a lot of this year has been about rolling out things for the first time, proving that we could do what we wanted to do. 

A lot of 2024  was about positioning ourselves for growth. And now 2025 is about growing into the infrastructure we've created alongside our partners. We're projecting that we'll be able to reach about 60,000 moms by the end of 2025 and become profitable around then.

That’s very impressive. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Is there anything else you want to add before we go? 

I think the most important thing that I hope comes across to fellow founders, especially moms, is that it’s okay and maybe even expected for your process to look different. And raising money is just one tool, and one way of getting feedback. You’re doing the impossible every day.

I think those of us who have been through accelerators before, and I've been through a few, we've all been told, “This is the fundraising playbook. It has to look like this. It takes this amount of time. You need this level of funnel, you need this exact pitch.” 

And I think the reality is, especially if you come from a less conventional background, as a female founder or any other underrepresented group, I mean, you know the statistics. It’s rare and difficult and you should be proud of getting it done, no matter what it takes. 

I don't ever want anybody to feel bad, the way I have, about the process looking different or feeling different. Because ultimately, there's so much about building a business that isn't fundraising, and of course fundraising is incredibly important, and getting the right investors is absolutely key, but there are a million ways to skin a cat, or grow a business. No one way. 

And especially other moms out there, a lot of us are really motivated to make a different future for our kids and for other moms by building a business, and it’s okay for things to look different than what we’ve been told it should look like. We already experience that every day in raising a family!

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