Plume is the winner of the 2022 Colorado Inno award in the Health Care category.
Denver health-tech startup Plume has expanded its virtual platform to 16,000 transgender patients in 42 states, adding 30 states in just the past two years. It raised $24 million in a Series B financing round this August to continue its nationwide expansion and allow more patients to receive gender-affirming treatment.
Location: Denver
Top Execs: Jerrica Kirkley and Matthew Wetschler, co-founders
What inspired your business? Plume formed from the experiences of Jerrica, a family physician and trans woman who had seen her gender-diverse patients face many barriers to affirming, high-quality health care. [She] had to navigate those on her own as a patient herself. Matthew, an emergency medicine physician… saw patients poorly served by a broken system. [He’s] a spinal cord injury survivor who has also faced many challenges in his own health care journey.
How did you take Plume from idea to reality? Jerrica and Matthew are best friends from medical school who always knew medicine could be better for both patients and care teams. They were two doctors with a dream — to leverage a virtual care model that could provide unprecedented access to the gender-diverse population through a community-aligned and expert care team at the touch of a button. They piloted the initial version in Colorado with money from their own pockets starting in August 2019 and closed their first round of funding in early 2020.
What was Plume’s biggest accomplishment in the past year? We are incredibly humbled to have become the largest provider of trans health care in the country and likely the world, with over 11,000 active patients. We are also the first and only trans-founded company dedicated to the transgender [community] to have raised a Series B round of funding.
What about your biggest challenge? Raising our Series B with the changing markets while continuing to scale took a big effort and required an amazing team effort by everybody.
What are your business goals for the next year? We are excited to broaden into more primary care services to provide a holistic virtual care experience for the trans community and start accepting health insurance to help further reduce the out-of-pocket cost for our patients.
How does your company inspire its employees to innovate? We are a company composed of incredible gender-diverse folks and allies with so many intersecting backgrounds who are all constantly thinking big, and how we can push beyond the status quo to make the most incredible experience for the trans community.
If you had to choose a mascot for your company, what would it be? Our mascot would be a narwhal… need I say more? Back when we first opened an office — before the pandemic started and we all went virtual — we had little stuffed narwhals all over the office to bring a little cheer and inspiration.
Colorado Inno Awards finalists in the health care category:
- Safe Rx
- Serenity Engage
