In observance of Women’s Breast Cancer Awareness month, we at the Founder Institute want shine a spotlight on one of our top women’s health-related Graduate companies: Kindara and its founders Katherine Bicknell and William Sacks. And while women's health may not seem like the most lucrative industry in the startup world, since launching Kindara has raised more than $8 million in funding, and were recently acquired by Prima-Temp.
Kindara was born out of a desire to have a safer alternative to the pill. Bicknell was interested in tracking her menstrual cycles since she has always had strange periods and the only solutions doctors ever gave her was the pill. She had been on it since the age of 11 until she decided to take charge of her own body. She had been tracking her cycles for years before she met Sacks on her way to Burning Man festival.
After the two started dating for a while, Sacks was curious about condom use and suggested Bicknell go on the pill. She declined and in the process enlightened him to the plight of young women all over the world. After doing some research into the matter, the couple decided that this was an opportunity to help women everywhere.
With the explosion of wearable technology and health apps, came FitBit, which directly inspired Sacks and Bicknell to found Kindara (with help from the New York Founder Institute) and create their own device that would help women accurately track their cycles.
Roughly half of the people on this planet get periods, and yet, we still don't know all that we could about them. Kindara is trying to shed more light on this with their innovative app and fertility thermometer. They believe that by acquiring more input data from users on their menstruation cycles we can gain a better understanding of periods and why the effects they have on a woman vary so drastically from person to person.
Periods also relate to pregnancy, a huge issue for many. People want to know what days of the month are optimal for conception so that they can have children, and likewise people want this information so that they can have sexual intercourse without the risk of accidental pregnancy.
Birth control pills are comprised of synthetic hormones that women take to control their periods and prevent pregnancies. The problem with these pills is that there are dangerous side-effects from such high-levels of hormones. As William Sacks said when he learned about these dangers and the alternatives,
I was blown away. On the one hand I was shocked and dismayed that I had been under this totally false understanding of how women’s bodies work. On the other, I was like, ‘Wow, there’s a side effect-free, hormone-free, form of birth control.'
This side effect-free form of birth control that Sacks is referring to has to do with charting a woman's menstruation cycle. Physically speaking there are only about six days out of every menstrual cycle that a woman can get pregnant so if you can accurately tell when these cycles are occurring you can plan around them without using dangerous amounts of hormones.
This is where Kindara comes in. Their fertility thermometers and connected application are designed to give women accurate data and enable them to make healthier lifestyle choices.
And while the original founders, Bicknell and Sacks, are no longer with the company, Kindara continues to make major strides in the women’s health tech industry. Since launching in 2010, the company has raised over $8 million in funding, and last year partnered up with SeedInvest, a popular equity-based crowdfunding platform for this round of investments. And the company’s popularity continues to increase: so far the Kindara app has been downloaded over 1.4 million times and pairs with a number of tech-health devices to provide users with the most comprehensive data available, and the app is currently being used more than twice a day by over 90,000 individual users.
And as if that weren’t enough, Prima-Temp, the machine learning and women's cyclical health company, recently announced that it acquired Kindara as part of its move for next year's launch of the Priya Personal Fertility Sensor platform.
Below are some other Founder Institute Graduates who are also making waves in the world of women’s tech:
Aomm.tv
Founder: María Cebrián Fernández
Chapter: Madrid
Description: Aomm.tv is the a yoga and pilates online platform, offering high-quality classes that can be practiced anywhere, anytime from any internet-connected device.
CycleHarmony
Founder: Jing Jin
Chapter: Los Angeles
Description: Cycle Harmony provides content, tools, programs, products and services to empower women to improve their menstrual health.
MotiSpark
Founder: Ariel Langer McNichol
Chapter: Los Angeles
Description: MotiSpark provides improved outcomes for chronic diseases through a highly personalized, entertaining, intelligent video-based application suite.
Sayfty
Founder: Shruti Kapoor
Chapter: New York
Description: Sayfty works with communities to facilitate open conversations with the aim to bring a fundamental shift in how violence against women is perceived.
