Hinge Health’s IPO: Lessons & Hopes for Women’s Health Founders & Funders

Why this digital health exit could lift all boats — including women’s health!

Apr 01, 2025

ICYMI, Hinge Health — the virtual MSK (musculoskeletal) company that provides digital physical therapy, coaching, and pain management solutions — recently filed their S-1 to go public later this year.

I’ve been digging into the filing not just as a milestone for digital health, but for what it signals to those of us building in women’s health. Why? Successful digital health IPOs have been few and far between since 2021, and women's health companies in particular have struggled to find pathways to exit. The strategies that worked for Hinge could offer a valuable roadmap for founders looking to build (and exit) venture-scale women’s health businesses.

TL;DR. A lot of people are sitting on the edge of their seat, banking on a successful outcome here — not just for Hinge, but for digital health more broadly.

While I can’t predict how the public markets will respond, the Hinge S-1 showcases a compelling business driven by sharp insights, operational rigor, and sustainable growth. In 2024, Hinge scaled to over $390 million in revenue with 77% gross margins — a profile that looks a lot more like software than traditional healthcare services.

If you're looking for a full financial breakdown — or want to weigh the bull vs. bear case as to whether Hinge can surpass its frothy $6B valuation — check out the excellent deep dives from Hospitalogy, Chrissy Farr, and Kevin O’Leary at HTN.

My aim here is different: to distill the key operational learnings for women’s health founders and funders who want to follow in their footsteps, and to share what I’m personally hopeful for following Hinge’s exit.

Three Learnings For Women’s Health Founders & Funders

#1: Build for big categories, not point solutions

If you're going to focus on a specific clinical condition or life stage, it has to be big enough — from a TAM or P&L perspective — to escape the “point solution” trap. This is part market positioning, part care model design.

Hinge does not sell itself as a post-op recovery tool or a fall prevention program (even though it offers both); instead, it positions itself as an MSK platform. By doing so, they are a solution to a top three cost driver for every employer and insurer. As their S-1 highlights:

40% of U.S. adults suffer from MSK-related conditions
$661B in MSK-related medical costs in 2023 alone
Physical therapy accounts for $70B of that spend (and growing)

💡 The Lesson: Women's health founders should take note. The opportunity lies in creating platforms that address large populations and major cost centers, not narrow tools for singular conditions or life stages.

Point solutions: postpartum mental health, HRT for menopause, ovarian cancer prevention
Platform opportunities: women’s comprehensive healthcare — spanning fertility to menopause to pelvic floor dysfunction

You don’t have to (and can’t) do it all on day one. But you do need to paint a vision, and stake your claim in a category that’s big enough to matter to buyers of healthcare. This is as true for an employer customer as it is for a health system (and I would say, applies to consumers who have point solution fatigue, too). Don’t sell features. Anchor your offering in value pools that can serve the largest population or “line item” possible.

#2: For tech-enabled services, your tech must show up on your income statement

Hinge Health pairs clinicians (primarily PT) with technology to dramatically scale physical therapy — a modality that’s notoriously difficult to access in real-world settings.

I haven’t used Hinge’s product myself, but from the S-1 and commentary, it’s clear their model is tech-heavy and human-light (if you want a skeptic’s take on purely virtual PT, read Matthew Holt’s personal product review!). Skepticism aside, Hinge claims to have automated 95% of the “hands on” work of PT by combining virtual care with AI-powered motion tracking and guided therapy content. That’s a monumental shift for a field historically defined by actual hands on actual bodies.

I found this stat to be really striking:

A single Hinge care team member facilitated ~57,750 sessions/year
By comparison, an in-person PT averages ~2,640 sessions/year — that’s a 20X productivity lift!

This kind of leverage drives Hinge’s 77% gross margins — enabling scale without the linear cost growth typical of healthcare services.

I can tell you from experience: not all “tech-enabled” care models can claim this level of operational efficiency. Too often, healthcare startups over-invest in tech without a clear tie to margin leverage. In financial markets like these, capital intensive R&D risks becoming a liability instead of an asset.

It’s still TBD whether Hinge will be able to justify their $6B valuation in the public markets. But with software-like margins at scale, they are arguably better positioned than anyone.

💡 The Lesson: If you're investing in “homegrown” tech in tech-enabled healthcare, ensure you can draw a direct line from your tech to your margin (and IMO, patient outcomes, too). Women’s health is full of incredible technology — from wearable hormone sensors to predictive diagnostics — but unless it dramatically reduces your cost-to-serve or supercharges your revenue, it won’t earn any points from investors in today’s markets.

#3: Clinical outcomes are your moat and growth engine

From the start, Hinge has prioritized clinical validation — a move that helped convince risk-averse buyers like employers and payors to invest in their solution. Their S-1 features:

A deep bench of clinical research: 19+ peer-reviewed studies
Proven patient outcomes: in a 10,000-member study, users saw a 68% reduction in pain and 58% drop in depression/anxiety after 12 weeks
Clear employer savings: $2,400 in savings per participant by avoiding unnecessary surgeries, prescriptions and imaging

This kind of data builds credibility, and propelled Hinge to become the MSK vendor of record for 42% of the Fortune 500, with 20M+ covered lives.

💡 The Lesson: In healthcare, outcomes are your moat and your growth engine. Women’s health startups often have strong anecdotal success — but turning that into published data and ROI with dollar signs is how you win contracts and command premiums. Outcomes isn’t just about impact and prestige — it’s your wedge.

Three Hopes For Women’s Health Founders & Funders

Hope #1: A successful Hinge IPO reopens the digital health exit window

There hasn’t been a successful digital health IPO since the 2021 peak — and many of these companies have struggled in the public markets.

Amwell is down ~97%, and even Teladoc’s mega $18.6B acquisition of Livongo has become a cautionary tale. Public market sentiment has cooled, and that chill has moved downstream, impacting private investors, valuations, and deal velocity.

If Hinge prices reasonably (~7–8x revenue) and performs well post-IPO, it could reopen the market for a whole slew of digital health players waiting to exit. It would show that digital health companies with strong margins, validated outcomes and sustainable growth can thrive in the public markets.

🌱 My hope: That Hinge sticks their landing, and becomes the first domino in a new wave of digital health exits — giving growth-stage companies a viable path forward and gets capital flowing again.

Hope #2: Investors recognize Hinge Health not only as an MSK company, but a women’s health success story

When most people think of MSK in the context of employer healthcare, they often picture warehouse workers, factory floors and “back-breaking” jobs typically done by men. What’s often overlooked is women’s MSK needs: yes, women have back pain and knee pain too, but also issues related to pelvic health, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and menopause.

Hinge is helping shift that narrative. They’ve already launched a specialized pelvic floor physical therapy program — a long-overlooked area with massive need. While I am biased towards Origin’s “tech and touch” model for PFPT (you can read more from CEO Carine Carmy here), I am nonetheless bullish that the more players expanding access to taboo, hard-to-access services, the better for women. And, there’s more to come: Hinge’s S-1 hints at expansion into perimenopause and menopause too, citing that 71% of women in perimenopause experience MSK pain.

While they haven’t broken out revenue for these segments or business lines yet, that could change once they’re public — giving operators and investors a purview into the scale and growth of their women’s health business.

🌱 My hope: That Hinge becomes another scaled example of a “non-women-only” healthcare company with a massive women’s health business — just like Oura, Function, and others.

As I shared a few weeks back, I believe the growing trend of every company becoming a “women’s health” company is a net positive. By proving the growth and exit potential of women’s health to the market, companies like Hinge can help improve the flow of capital to the women-only and women-centric companies — unlocking more innovation, more investment, and ultimately, better outcomes for women.

Hope #3: Hinge paves the way for a long-awaited women’s health IPO

Women's health desperately needs more exits to break out of its current bind: there are few public comps (outside of Progyny, which is really a fertility benefits platform), making late-stage fundraising and valuation benchmarking difficult for women’s health founders and investors. That lack of growth stage funding cascades downstream creating a bottleneck that makes it harder for earlier-stage companies to raise the larger rounds needed to scale, reinforcing the “no comps, no capital” cycle.

A successful Hinge IPO — especially if markets recognize the strength of its women’s health business — could help break that cycle. It would show there’s appetite for verticalized, tech-enabled care platforms, and offer late-stage companies like Maven stronger comps to work with. It would also help early-stage founders see a clearer path to scale and sustainability post–Series A.

🌱 My hope: That Hinge’s success becomes a beacon — not just for MSK, but for every founder betting on better, more personalized care models in women’s health.

In short…

Hinge Health’s S-1 isn’t just a financial filing — it’s a blueprint. For founders and funders building in women’s health and digital health more broadly, it’s a reminder that:

Outcomes drive growth.

Margins matter.

Big markets, bold bets, and operational excellence win.

Now, let’s all cross our fingers that Wall Street agrees.

If you enjoy my writing, click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

And if you’re new here, I encourage you to check out some of my popular past issues on the trillion dollar women’s health opportunity here, the rise of non-women-only healthcare companies here, and the future of women’s health research here.