Pride(full) Private Companies 🌈

June 28, 2021

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June is always buzzing with energy, the start of summer, the promise of vacation days, and the raucous excitement of Pride. But the celebration is having a reckoning within the LGBTQ+ community. The annual celebration marked by dance parties, queer performances, and a parade down 5th Avenue has long questioned the role of corporate sponsors who organizers feel “rainbow wash” in place of making real contributions to social justice issues affecting the queer community.

BP Employees in 2019 Pride Parade

This year, however, the focus came down to whether uniformed police officers had a place in the parade, after mounting criticism of violence against people of color. The conversation comes full circle, considering Pride's origin as a revolt against police brutality against the gay community, led primarily by Black trans women, in what is known as the Stonewall uprising.

Early Pride celebrations post-Stonewall

In order to celebrate Pride, PrivCo is spotlighting several companies led by members of the LGBTQ community as well as looking at the companies with queer-centric value propositions.

4 Queer Private Companies:

Folx Health: A health & wellness startup for the queer and transgender community, offering telehealth services, online prescription management, & fulfillment. Founded in Boston, MA in 2019, the company raised a $25MM Round A led by Bessemer Venture Partners in February to develop new product offerings and expand into other states.

Plume: Similar to Folx, Plume offers telehealth services for gender-queer and transgender people's healthcare. The company uses a $99/mo medication management model and offers a one-off letter-writing service for patients to meet requirements for gender affirmation surgery. The Denver, CO startup raised a $14MM Round A in February led by Craft Ventures.

Her: The San Francisco dating app is for LGBTQ+ women & queer folks and focuses on finding a lasting love for its users. Users have access to the free plan which uses ads or they can pay a monthly $14.99 plan for premium features. The app has 7MM users and hasn’t taken money since its 2015 seed round of $1MM.

Grindr: This private company offers a micro-location selection of users to meet for casual dating. While its main user base is gay men, the company launched Blendr for straight men & women to meet for “instant-dates”. Grindr was acquired in 2020 by San Vicente Acquisition LLC, a group of Los Angeles investors who keep a low profile. The app had been criticized for its race filter, which the company removed as of June 1st.