Founded by entrepreneurs and , a duo of cousins who are also mothers, the startup today announced it closed its seed round of $900,000, adding to an early investment of $700,000. It has raised a total of $1.6 million to date.

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While TOP describes itself as a “social impact” startup, its lead investor in today’s financing announcement is a for-profit fund spun out of : . Per the press release, the firm led the round in support of Sullivan who is an alumnus of UMass Amherst. Angel investors also participated in the round, however TOP declined to disclose details.

In its announcement, TOP said it plans to use the seed capital to expand its presence in grocery stores and retail locations nationwide. It also plans to work with and its own e-commerce platform. It was refreshing to hear TOP mention product presence as a priority, especially with what feels like a flurry of direct-to-consumer (DTC) offerings everywhere.

When I asked TOP for more information, co-founder Sullivan nodded to growth in the company’s DTC channel, so that explains the focus on distributing into retail in 2020.

Let’s get into how TOP plans to differentiate the other store staple brands for tampons and pads.

TOP estimates that almost “20 billion pads and tampons end up in landfills each year and can take centuries to biodegrade.” Sullivan and her team want to change that by offering plant-based tampons.

The company sources its organic cotton from Turkey, India and Tanzania. Meanwhile, its factory in Barcelona sources power from running water, and TOP claims that everyone “from the farmer to the factory worker is paid a fair wage.” The applicator is plant-based, it claims. TOP also said all products have a seal made of cotton (not plastic) and organic certification from ICEA, the Ethical and Environmental Certification Institute.

TOP’s products are also solid in biodegradable boxes.

The company charges $7 to $8.50 per box for 16 tampons, or 20 pads. From a price-point perspective, traditional tampon brands like Tampax sell for around $7, and, a venture-backed startup that has , sells a box of tampons for around $10.

It’s noteworthy that Lola wants to destigmatize period products, but has other lines as well around sexual health and menstrual cramps. Like TOP, Lola started with tampons as a flagship offering and has since attracted investors like and .

Unlike Lola, however, TOP points to its focus on a younger demographic as a key differentiator.

“A key part of our purpose is giving back, with a focus on middle and high school students,” Sullivan told Crunchbase News. “When we heard one in five girls in the U.S. have missed school because they didn’t have access to period products, we decided to do something about it.” She added that the company is partnering with schools and nonprofits to make access easier.

TOP declined to share specific metrics around growth or volume of products sold thus far, beyond “ high triple-digit growth in our business.”

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This is less than the 2018 all time high of 158 companies, and above 2017 (102 companies), 2016 (87 companies) and 2015 (106 companies). To qualify for this distinction, venture-backed privately held companies were valued in a funding round at $1 billion or more.

In the US, 78 new unicorns emerged in 2019, 11 more than in 2018. China unicorn creation slowed down substantially in 2019 with 22 new unicorns from a high of 58 in 2018. The next highest count of new unicorns is Germany and Brazil with five, a record for both countries. Israel, India, and the UK all report four new unicorns this year.

Unicorn Funding By Year

To understand 2019 through a different lens, let’s switch gears from the 2019 new unicorn cohort to funding to all unicorn companies. In 2019 unicorn companies raised $85.1 billion — down from 2018 at $139 billion, and 2017 at $93.8 billion.

Despite concerns about a changed venture funding market after WeWork pulled their IPO on Sept. 30 2019, funding to unicorns was up quarter over quarter by 11 percent, but the quarter was down year over year by 54 percent. It is worth noting that 2018 included two of the largest rounds ever to unicorn companies with $14 billion invested in Ant Financial, and $12.8 billion in Juul. However, these two rounds alone do not account for all the increased funding to unicorns in 2018. We fully expect 2019 invested dollars to increase at a greater rate than prior years as new unicorns are minted in 2020.

2019 Unicorn Cohort

2019 new unicorn companies collectively added , and $50.5 billion in equity funding in total over time. The leading sectors for 2019 unicorns were in Financial Services, Commerce and Shopping, Data and Analytics, Transportation, SaaS, and Health Care.

The five most highly valued new unicorns include:

• ($7.3 billion) the autonomous vehicles subsidiary from Uber
• ($7 billion) an e-commerce platform for pharmaceutical products
• ($6.2 billion) unifying customer analytics
• ($5 billion) Travis Kalanick’s smart kitchens for food delivery
• ($5 billion) a sustainable automotive technology company

Six companies that became unicorns in 2019 and also went public in the same year, listed in order of IPO valuation, are:

• ($3.7 billion) a genomics platform
• ($1.7 billion) targeted at treating infectious diseases
• ($1.7 billion) a marketplace for luxury goods
• ($1.6 billion) which automates back office financial operations
• ($1.4 billion) a producer of Blockchain servers
• ($1.3 billion) to manage healthcare data

All of these companies had an increased valuation at their IPO over their last private funding round in 2019, ranging from 25 percent for Health Catalyst to 189 percent for 10X Genomics.

Investors In The 2019 Unicorn Cohort

With $50 billion invested in this new unicorn cohort, it is interesting to look at the investors fueling the growth of these companies. The most active investors in companies that became unicorns in 2019 by portfolio count include the following:

with 13 portfolio companies, and with 11, , , , and at 10. This list of investors includes a mix of early and late stage venture, corporate venture, and private equity/alternative investors all actively seeking stakes in highly valued venture backed companies.

The most active investors by deal count, which showcases investors who are in multiple rounds for companies who joined the unicorn ranks in 2019 include the following: New Enterprise Associates in 30 rounds, Insight Partners (26), and GV (25), and Spark Capital (24).

2019 Unicorns By Founders

While there is no shortage in funding for these high-value companies, there remains a discrepancy between the number of male and female founders that reach the coveted unicorn status. Five (4 percent) of new unicorns in 2019 had female-only founders and 16 (12 percent) were co-founded by a female-male team. Overall, 114 (84 percent) unicorns in 2019 had male-only founders.

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