Showing the power of startup women’s health brands, P&G buys This is L (YC S15) | Hacker News Reader

Showing the power of startup women’s health brands, P&G buys This is L (YC S15)

techcrunch.com

67 pointspb26 comments

This article reminds me of the time when I told someone from the tech/rationality community that I was working for a consumer health tech startup that was focused on women's fertility and menstrual health. I was helping to design the UX of the product that had to do with the actual tracking of their cycles and their health. My friend had a reaction that was quite typical of most people I talked to, but it's one that I've kept around as an example of what not to do;

  is this, like, very, and truly, *the* best thing you can do with your time?   like, back-of-the-envelope: what is the amount of money women spend on keeping track of their periods?  like, the savy of them buys a $.5 notepad, and circles the dates?

At the time I was shocked that he didn't even realise that this was a problem, but it was actually that lack of empathy that made me realise that a lot of people in the tech community don't actually think about some of the more germane problems facing the lives of 50.5% of the population --- it was quite eye-opening for me. Our schemas were so different that I found it quite difficult to explain why this mattered. Sure, I could go over the normal talking points - a) everyone's periods are different and they are often different every time, b) there are tons of possible complications and you can get into a world of hurt over the slightest variations in the hormonal cycle, their genetics, and the health of their ovaries, uterus, or even vagina, and c) it wasn't that easy to catch these while they were happening and women most often discovered issues the hard way. Ergo, giving women a map to their bodies - no matter who they are or where or how they were born - would give them a greater sense of control over their lives. But he - and a lot of other folks - just wouldn't get it.

Maybe, finally, seeing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will get more people interested in these problems and talk to the women around them about it?

I’ve made progress informing people quite plainly that, over time, the data of an irregular period is an early indicator of a number of life-changing health conditions. But I agree that people are most geared towards seeing that if something has monetary worth than it’s undeniable it has innate worth. Empathy doesn’t have to be engaged then.

> I agree that people are most geared towards seeing that if something has monetary worth than it’s undeniable it has innate worth

I don't think that's true of most people, but I think it is a problem with the general tech and business community mindset.

To play devil's advocate: such dismissals are common to hear for all kinds of ideas/products. People are often not familiar or dismissive towards problems facing people other than them.

I'd say op's point stands regardless

Ok, but he explicitly tried to frame it as men "lacking empathy" for women, when it's just another case of someone out of touch with the target demographic.

I'm a woman, and this raises another point. People get really, really weird about this. Especially if you try to talk about it.

Also, women aren't just a target demographic. We're 50.5% of the population. And that's kinda the point. This isn't just inside baseball --- it's literally half of all humanity!

Not to brush this off in particular, but there are quite a few target demographics that are more than "half of all humanity". For example, people who use toilets.

women are a target demographic, just like men are a target demographic. just because its a large demographic doesn't mean it isn't a demographic.

noun: demographic: a portion of a population, especially considered as consumers.

literally a demographic.

That $.5 notepad can handle all 3 of your talking points, and it comes with privacy. (read the recent HackerNews article about DNA info being secretly shared if you can't see the problem)

Getting fancy, you can buy nice charts with colorful status stickers. Minus the stickers, you can print the charts on any printer. All of this is private.

No, it can't. And you're missing the point of why we're doing this. Such kind of tracking is powerful not because it helps you keep track of what happened, but what could happen. There are patterns that humans can't easily discern that correlate with everything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis --- detecting the problem early on, gives people a better, longer life in the long run, and prevents potentially fatal complications in the case of pregnancy.

What you're saying is exactly like a logistics company saying - why should we enter our logs into this computer? What's the point? A pen and paper seem to work just fine... We all know how that story turned out. This story is playing out with women's lives instead of efficiency points/dollars in the global economy (though at some level it does map to do that as well), and real people are suffering as a result. They deserve better.

There are patterns that humans can't easily discern that correlate with everything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis

That's the thing: us from the outside don't know this (particularly men, but I'm guessing many women as well). But we do know that over-engineering is an endemic problem in our industry, including in the healthcare area. So the question seems fair, because we don't want to see people's health being exploited by selling them useless stuff. Because those abound. It's always the makers/sellers' job to show that their thing is useful.

A pen and paper seem to work just fine... We all know how that story turned out.

No, not all of us know. People - even those in the logistics space - still ask that question today. As someone who helped develop such solutions, educating people was part and parcel of our business.

I think you are being dismissive of a solution that you can't datamine. The privacy violation is real, unless you made an app without any kind of network permissions.

Hint for those watching: HIPPA doesn't apply to self-gathered self-entered data, and there are many (insurance companies, drug companies, diaper services...) who would love to know this data.

> That $.5 notepad can handle all 3 of your talking points, and it comes with privacy.

Except that notepad can't tell you in semi-real time what is going on.

A proper tracker can tell when "Hey, this period is likely to be short." or "Yo, go get checked, something is very weird."

And then sell that data to your insurance company.

There's a math error even assuming your premise is true. There are 3.75 billion women on this world. Even limiting it to women with smartphones, there are over a billion of them. If each of them is currently spending $0.50 on a notepad (again, we're assuming your premise is true even though it's not), that's a $500M market. Not bad.

It's recurring revenue also. Eventually all of them will run out of space in the notepad and have to buy a new one. It might take years if you assume a page a month but maybe with clever marketing you can get some percentage of users to upgrade to luxury $5 notepads. That's 10x revenue per user!

You see this with everyone who has no exposure to a type of person. “How many people actually stand in LINE to buy sneakers?” “How many people are ACTUALLY going to vote for that clown?” Etc

Please don't quote long lines of text with four spaces. It makes the text unreadable.

It's likely that if someone lacks empathy they don't think about the problems of 100% of the population.

I can't work out if this is sarcasm or not.

Is the implication that people who don't lack empathy consider the problems of 100% of the population? Because that's obviously and demonstrably false.

I'm arguing that it's meaningless to try to pick a demographic that a non-empathetic person can relate with...since by definition, they struggle with that very skill across the entire population.

Quoting article:

> "The combination of a non-technical, female founder operating in the consumer packaged goods market with a mission-driven company was an anomaly in the Silicon Valley of four years ago"

Um, yes, it's an anomaly in Silicon Valley.

However, go sit on the parking shuttle bus at MD&M West and just listen. Everyone is basically trying to find a marketing angle to sell the same undifferentiated consumer products.

Congrats Talia and team! :)

Good for them. I hope working for P&G enables them to do everything they are planning at scale.

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