Woman-focused Dama Health, which offers personalized birth control, sees Philly as its gateway to the US market

For a London healthtech company that focuses on personalized medicine for women, all roads lead back to Philly.

Dama Health came to Pennsylvania this summer to participate in the University City Science Center’s Capital Readiness Program, which provides connections and resources to medtech companies preparing to raise money. 

The program solidified the company’s choice to build its presence in the United States and Philly, co-founder and chief product officer Paulina Cecula, told Technical.ly. 

“It just made a lot of sense for us,” Cecula said. “As a UK company building a product and commercializing in the US, we were very much thinking about, how do we enter the market?” 

This is the first Capital Readiness cohort to have participants from the UK. Since launching in 2023, alumni companies have raised $23.8 million, according to the Science Center. Past participants have recognized the value of having a presence in Philly after doing the program. 

Dama Health focuses on personalized medicine for women, specifically hormonal contraception. The company started as a research project, and Cecula and her cofounders wanted to find a way to eliminate the trial and error stage of finding the right birth control. 

The company’s first clinic partners are in Philly, thanks to two of the company’s medical supporters having clinics based here. One advisor hosted the company’s first platform trial earlier this year. 

The company’s four-person team travels back and forth to Philly every few months to connect with its partners and started looking into who else they should connect with in the region, which led to applying for Capital Readiness. 

Philly may not be permanent, but it’s right for now

The company is still young, Cecula said, so it has the flexibility to go wherever the best environment for the company is. 

While it’s still not sure where their permanent home in the US will be, the team enjoys being in Philly for the time being. 

A lot of companies build up in the UK and then try to move over to the US, Cecula said. But Dama Health is still in an early stage and chose to focus instead on building up in the US. 

The United States receives the most foreign direct investments globally, with the UK in the top five countries to do so, according to Research FDI. Total venture capital raised in the UK in 2024 is predicted to be $4.7 billion, while in the US it is predicted to be $264.5 billion, according to Statista. 

Dama’s team traveled to the US often, but always visited widely known tech hubs like Boston and New York, Cecula said. They didn’t know about the tech ecosystem in Philly until being exposed through clinical partnerships.

Building in Philly is also advantageous because it’s close to those other East Coast cities, expanding the company’s reach, she said. 

US-based companies have fewer funding restrictions

Dama Health has raised about $1 million so far, Cecula said, and the team wanted to take their time thinking about who the best investors for the company are and how to prepare for its next raise round.

The Capital Readiness program reinforced for Cecula that it may be easier to raise money and grow faster as a US entity rather than a UK one. This means the main company would be headquartered in the US, while the UK office is a smaller branch. 

Program investors told Cecula that there is less risk for investors if they were a US entity and some investors are legally restricted to only invest in US entities. 

However, being based in the UK comes with research and development access, tax benefits and tech costs are lower, she said. 

“We’re trying to see whether we can position the company in a way of some employees that can be offshore [in the UK],” Cecula said. Nothing is legally settled about where staff or headquarters will be located, she added, but having “the commercial and the executive team in the US is potentially the right plan.”