Women’s health startup Tia has slashed about 23% of its staff, Business Insider has learned.
The company, which provides in-person and virtual care tailored to women, cut 27% of its corporate team, or 17 people; 22% of its providers, or 27 people; and 23% of its field support team, or 28 people, according to an email to employees sent Monday evening by Tia CEO Felicity Yost.
Tia’s layoffs show how even buzzy, well-funded startups are being forced to reckon with healthcare’s economic pressures against venture capital’s growth expectations. Once a rising star backed by Melinda French Gates, Tia is now under pressure to prove that its hybrid model of tech-enabled women’s clinics can actually turn a profit.
The demise of similar healthcare startups like former Silicon Valley darling Forward has shown how hard tech-enabled healthcare can be to scale; even Amazon owned-health clinic company One Medical has struggled with profitability.
Tia confirmed the layoffs in a statement to Business Insider.
Tia operates as a one-stop healthcare shop for women, providing services from gynecology and primary care to mental healthcare, with options for in-person and virtual care. The startup runs 11 clinics, according to its website, including six locations in Los Angeles, two in New York City, one in San Francisco, and two in Arizona.
Yost told employees in her email that the layoffs were a response to feedback Tia received in a recent fundraise. Yost said Tia sought that funding after its business’s underperformance meant Tia would not be able to reach profitability without more cash.
The feedback from the fundraise “required us to rethink our business in the current economic and policy climate, which is one that prizes cost and profit-consciousness,” Yost said in her email. “We must manage towards a faster timeline to be corporate-level profitable than we previously contemplated.”
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“Tia has seen strong growth, particularly in membership, which has outpaced our expectations for 2025. At the same time, we’re facing ongoing structural challenges impacting the broader care delivery sector, such as cost pressures from rising labor rates and tighter reimbursement rates, which require us to be more disciplined in our operations,” a Tia spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider.
In-person clinics have proven difficult to sustain financially, even for well-funded healthcare companies. Forward shut down abruptly in November 2024 after raising over $650 million to scale its tech-driven clinics and automated “CarePods.”
Primary care chain VillageMD has begun selling its clinics after spinning off from Walgreens in the retailer’s sale to Sycamore Partners in August; Walgreens had announced plans to close 160 VillageMD clinics in April 2024 to curb losses. Walmart shuttered all 51 of its health centers later in April, citing a lack of profitability.
While Tia hasn’t announced a round of funding since its $100 million Series B in 2021, Yost’s email to employees references Tia’s “Series C growth plan.” Tia didn’t respond to a question from Business Insider about its Series C. The startup also raised an undisclosed amount of Series B extension funding from Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures in 2023, which Tia said brought its total funding to $150 million.
“Across healthcare, we’re seeing organizations respond to market trends that favor operational efficiency, sustainable growth, and sharper financial discipline. Tia is doing the same, and from a position of strength,” the Tia spokesperson said. The spokesperson added that Tia has more health system partnerships and expansion announcements planned for early next year.
More from Tia’s email
Yost said in her email to employees that the fires in Los Angeles in early January had challenged Tia’s business in the first quarter. She also cited “slower than necessary growth that hampered our business.”
Tia introduced new projects in the second quarter, “meant to counteract the dip in Q1 performance,” Yost wrote. Those initiatives included a new model to allow patients to get care from Tia without becoming a member, a partnership for Tia members to access compounded GLP-1 prescriptions, and a national rollout of Tia’s virtual care services.
While the new no-membership-required model outperformed expectations, Yost said, underperformance across the rest of the business led Tia to seek additional funding because “we would not achieve profitability with our existing cash runway, as planned.”
Yost said Tia did ultimately secure additional funding, but received feedback in the process that led to the layoffs.
Yost and Witte started Tia in 2016, focusing on in-person clinics. The startup began rolling out virtual care services in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and later shifted to a hybrid model.
Tia’s last reported layoff occurred in July 2022, as Business Insider reported the following November. Tia cofounder and then-CEO Carolyn Witte told BI that the layoffs were a preemptive response to the market downturn so Tia could continue to grow responsibly.
Witte stepped down as Tia’s CEO in April 2024 and into the role of Tia’s chairwoman. Witte said a LinkedIn post about her departure from the role that Yost, formerly Tia’s president, would serve as Tia’s interim CEO.
In addition to the layoffs, Yost said in her Monday email that Tia would make significant changes to its operating expenses, including to its tools and contracts, and cut compensation for its senior leaders. Yost also said that Tia could no longer afford to hire clinical roles ahead of demand and “must creatively rethink how we optimize our administrative and care support roles across a broader range of responsibilities.”
She said the startup aims to make these changes without compromising its high-quality patient care standards.
Employees affected by the Tuesday layoffs, including patient-facing providers, were cut off from Tia’s systems immediately following the email.
