A Pill for Women’s Libido Meets a Cultural Moment

Then, within a year, Valeant, the company that acquired Sprout, effectively imploded, causing the entire Sprout team in Raleigh to be wiped out in a move so swift there was rotting food left in the refrigerator. Ms. Eckert had initially viewed the sale as an “entrepreneur’s dream.” In the hands of a bigger company, she believed Addyi would get out to the market faster than if Sprout had tried to commercialize it on its own. (The $1 billion price tag certainly didn’t hurt.)

When her plan fell apart, “it was really the feeling of just having let everybody down,” she said.

The pink pill’s second coming

That feeling, though, was also a powerful motivator. In 2016, Sprout’s former investors sued Valeant for failing to meet their contractual obligation to market Addyi. Two years later, Valeant made a deal, handing the keys to the company back to Ms. Eckert in exchange for 6 percent of the royalties, with an added bonus: a $25 million loan to help her bring Addyi back from the dead.

Today, Sprout 2.0, as Ms. Eckert calls it, operates out of an unremarkable office building and shopping complex about four miles from Ms. Eckert’s home. The team is small enough to fit around one big table for daily lunches and has a family feel, owing in part to the fact that some of them actually are Ms. Eckert’s family. Her older brother, Brian, is chief strategy officer. Justin Miller, Ms. Eckert’s fiancé, is Sprout’s chief operating officer. Even her ex-husband and co-founder, Mr. Whitehead, now chairs Sprout’s board.

The other employees inside this “unapologetically pink” office — as it says on the walls — are 20-or-so designers, marketers, supply chain specialists and one customer service agent with a particularly spicy inbox.

Their jobs are a bit different this time around. In the last few years, menopause and perimenopause have become, well, hot topics, and Silicon Valley investors and celebrities alike are contributing to a booming menopause economy.