Elizabeth Goldspink and Julie McClure on the Launch of Hello.Me

Elizabeth Goldspink [left] and Julie McClure [right] founders of hello.me

For Dr. Elizabeth Goldspink and entrepreneur Julie McClure, a chance meeting was all it took to cement the friendship that led to the creation of a health and lifestyle company. 

The two met during their first week of naturopathic school. Bonding over green juice and yoga, Goldspink and McClure became fast friends.

“We locked eyes in downward dog,” Goldspink jokes. 

About eighteen months ago, they decided to come together to create hello.me, a health company currently offering Top Up Tonic, a supplement for people who take the birth control pill. The supplement aims to add back in the nutrients that hormonal birth control depletes, such as B vitamins, vitamin C and zinc. 

“It sprung from both our personal need and talking in practice to women on the pill,” Goldspink says.

She says data has come out in recent years showing that hormonal birth control leads to deficiencies in the people who take them. Hello.me's aim is to offer a supplement specifically for people on the pill. 

“Going on the pill is liberating in one sense, and it’s difficult on the other, because of the side effects,” McClure says. 

There are 20 million women on hormone-based birth control in the United States. As McClure notes, “it’s a massive market.” 

The two have big plans to grow hello.me’s offerings beyond the Top Up Tonic. 

“We’ll be going into the beauty space next, with topicals and ingestibles,” McClure says. “This is the infancy of the brand.”

According to McClure, hello.me is working on a small seed fundraise. The two plan to do a Series A fundraise in the next eight months. 

“Capital is a challenge for any startup,” she says. She noted that while there’s a focus on funding female founders, it primarily is focused on tech startups, rather than those focused on consumer-facing brands.

The company will offer an incubation program that will work with young women to build products that they will then sell on their website. Hello.me also donates 2% of their sales to the non-profit Me to We.