Ro co-founder and CEO Zachariah Reitano mentioned whereas he’d “by no means say by no means” about probably taking the 7-year-old telehealth firm public, he thinks the advantages of being a non-public firm are rising.
Reitano dodged a number of questions from Axios reporter Dan Primack about whether or not or not the corporate has plans to IPO within the close to time period — or basically — at Axios’ BFD occasion on October 22.
“I would give an unsatisfying reply, however the fact is that proper now, we’re completely centered on delivering the best high quality product for our sufferers,” Reitano mentioned.
Ro has raised greater than $1 billion in enterprise capital from the likes of Common Catalyst, Initialized Capital, and Torch Capital, amongst many others. Ro most just lately raised $150 million in a spherical led by ShawSpring Companions that valued the corporate at round $6.6 billion.
Reitano’s sentiment is probably going one shared by different late-stage startup founders as venture-backed firms proceed to remain personal longer, in response to PitchBook information. One other issue preserving firms personal is the rise of the secondaries market as an more and more frequent technique to give traders and staff some liquidity — though the vast majority of exercise surrounds a handful of firms.
He additionally talked in regards to the firm’s large “uncomfortable guess” on weight reduction medication that grew to become accessible on the platform in 2023. Ro was based in 2017 by Rob Schutz, Saman Rahmanian, and Reitano as a telehealth firm centered on erectile disfunction. The corporate expanded to extra males’s and ladies’s well being classes, together with hair progress, fertility and pores and skin well being. But it surely has now change into properly often known as a supplier of a number of GLP-1s choices.
Reitano mentioned the corporate started growing this system to supply such medication in 2021 and moved a big proportion of its assets into the class on the time. It’s now one of many quickest rising sectors of its enterprise.
“Suppliers need sufferers to have it, and sufferers desperately need it. These issues have by no means occurred in any drug class earlier than, and so from our perspective, the prevalence and widespread utilization of GLP-1s is inevitable,” Reitano mentioned.
He added that the enlargement was pure on the time for the corporate as situations like weight problems impression lots of the different well being classes the corporate focuses on, together with fertility and sexual well being situations like erectile disfunction.
