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How Emerging Tech Revolutionized Fertility Tracking: Katherine Sakovich | CMO of Mira Care
94 Plays4 months ago
Mira Care is a California-based start-up that created a home-use medical device for hormone tracking. More than 100,000 women around the globe use it on daily basis to monitor their health and fertility.
This episode covers conversation about an innovative smart product that managed to evolve from an early R&D stage to becoming a successful solution that helps thousands of women around the world to monitor fertility. Mira Care is a fertility startup that designed and engineered an at-home hormone ab with user-friendly smart devices and reliable AI services. It’s a miniature egg-shaped device that uses sensors, camera and machine learning tools to track your hormones in a very precise and convenient manner. It is based on urine test that you can do with a special cup and a wand that women place in the device to get hormone test results on their smartphone app in a few moments.
In this episode we discuss with Katherine how to bring a new consumer and medical device to market where such category did not exist, how to establish a proper collaboration between R&D, Marketing, Customer Experience, Manufacturing and other teams and how to integrate user feedback into pipeline of innovation.
We discuss what matters for consumers, if they care about emerging tech like IoT, AI, Computer Vision or simply want the device to work reliably. Katherine also shares her perspective on access to medical data and we discuss if it’s a source of stress and anxiety or a path to build health confidence.
In this episode we also discuss recent statement from Scott Galloway who predicted death of CMO as a profession by February 2025 and uncover how Katherine plans to survive in the profession.
In the final chapter Katherine shares valuable insights from startups that she mentors in Bay area and tries to predict what’s next.
00:00:00 – 00:02:00: Topic and Guest intro
00:02:00 – 00:08:00: How Mira Care helps to monitor fertility
00:08:00 – 00:16:00: Why it took healthcare industry 50+ years to adopt innovation in fertility monitoring?
00:16:00 – 00:22:00: Challenges of hardware product development and marketing
00:22:00 – 00:27:00: Do users care about emerging tech?
00:27:00 – 00:31:00: Pipeline of product innovation and setup of R&D team
00:31:00 – 00:38:00: Challenges of a home-based diagnostics
00:38:00 – 00:43:00: Role of marketing in product development
00:43:00 – 00:45:00: Practice of using AI in product development
00:45:00 – 00:52:00: Mentoring next-gen healthcare startups
00:52:00 – 00:55:00: What’s next?
Please, enjoy the conversation, subscribe and rate the show!
This is a personal podcast. The views and opinions expressed here are only those of the author and do not represent those of any organization or any individual with whom the author may be associated, professionally or personally.
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Transcript
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey, welcome to Month in Millions, a practical and inspiring show about innovators and emergent tech practitioners. I'm the host of the show, Alex Babko. As emergent tech practitioners, we often deal with technology that is quite early to mass adoption or on the edge. Although R&D experiments lay an important foundation for future products and concepts, they rarely are taken into full-scale production.
00:00:40
Speaker
And today we're going to have a conversation about an innovative smart product that managed to evolve from an early R&D stage to becoming and a successful solution that helps thousands of women around the world to monitor fertility.
00:00:54
Speaker
The conversation will be around Mirocare, a fertility startup that designed and engineer engineered an at-home hormone lab with user-friendly smart devices and reliable AI services. And to those who are less familiar with the concept, imagine an egg-shaped device that uses AI to track your hormones in a very precise and convenient manner.
00:01:16
Speaker
All this requires is to pee on a mini wand, place the wand inside the device, and you get a hormone test result with your smartphone in a few moments. My guest today is Catherine Sakovich, a chief marketing officer of Mirocare, one of the world's fastest growing companies and most innovative women's health company in the grass.
00:01:37
Speaker
Katherine started her career in a creative agency in Belarus and eventually became a CEO of one of the most successful digital agencies agencies in Eastern Europe. I personally know Katherine from those early days when we collaborated and launched Volkswagen brand on Facebook and other the social networks, creating strategy, content and special projects to promote the brand pages, including hiding celebrities in car trunks. But that's a separate story. And today, Catherine is an inspiring marketing leader and a startup mentor and ambassador of Femtech in the Bay Area and a healthcare innovation professional.
00:02:14
Speaker
Hi, Catherine. Hi, happy to be here. I haven't realized we know each other so long. Oh, my God. Yeah, indeed. Catherine, thanks for coming to the podcast. I'm very excited about our upcoming conversation for many reasons, especially since both of us are at an intersection of emerging tech hardware and product development. In one of your interviews, you referenced that Fertility Home Check hasn't changed for decades, literally until Mirocare introduced the device to the market. To those of our listeners who are less familiar with Mirocare, can you guide us through the concept, please?
00:02:54
Speaker
Absolutely. So, traditionally, when you want to test for ovulation, when you're trying to conceive, you go to the pharmacy and you buy test trips, and these test trips exist from 60, so technology didn't change. It's similar to a pregnancy test. You receive just one answer, yes or no. And for many of women who experience hormonal imbalance or different like ah levels, regular cycles, it this answer doesn't really work.
00:03:24
Speaker
and also doesn't tell the story. So, what we do, we use the monofluorescence technology that is regular for lab equipment like our board, blood test, and put it in a mini device that has controlled environment. So, you can basically receive the same test. It's urine-based, but at home.
00:03:46
Speaker
And it compared to just yes or no, it gives numeric value for four most important reproductive hormones. So we always tell our customers that just snapshot of one day doesn't tell you the story, but when you start to test, you actually can see how your hormones fluctuate, how it changes, how your lifestyle supplements and other things that you do em impact it.
00:04:10
Speaker
I think it's the most exciting part when you see all these charts. you know It's like similar to people trying to use glucose monitors. And I always compare because it's just easy to understand to the concept of glucose monitors. They become very mainstream technology. And I think a couple of years ago from being just a solution for people with diabetes, they become a solution for someone who want to track nutrition and want to lose weight and want to just be healthy and reduce glucose spikes.
00:04:40
Speaker
So, it's similar concepts, but instead of glucose, you monitor your hormones. And for women, it's actually very interesting, because I don't know, we were laughing recently, is that is it like for men, just like one straight line? But for women, it's like back and forth, and you experience like your mood changes, your ah productivity changes. We collaborate with athletes, with the US soccer team, and doing several resources with um sport organizations to help athletes adjust their training schedule according to hormones. So, however, we started as a solution for measuring fertility and trying to conceive now we see much more applications for this technology for different use cases. ah How does it actually work?
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, you you take a sample and there is react chemical reactions that show hormones concentration and the camera does this scan of reaction and asks you to send data through Bluetooth to the app and app shows you ranges.
00:05:46
Speaker
And, for example, we started initially to have one biomarker, one hormone test mode. Now we have three, and next year we're launching four in one. I think it's a really like fast development for our RAD and CUDA for them, because adding each biomarker to the same test strip without extending a lot that test the lens and changing the technology itself, it's it's really a big achievement.
00:06:14
Speaker
And it's very exciting that your product helps so many people. But still, why do you think it took so much time to change the industry? Yes, there are several factors. Of course, ah it's not easy to get through FDA approval, you know, greatly about it and different registration. We're still receiving registrations in some countries that are different from the US.
00:06:40
Speaker
um and But also, I think that there are economical factors that overall fertility, is especially in the U.S., is out of pocket. um So, people need to pay for it. ah So, it's not really driven by investments from funds and organization because it's difficult to get reimbursement for this. But we started as a direct-to-consumer and it's really helped to get advocates and the data from consumers who were willing to buy. Our device cost $250. So, it's it's much cheaper than going to IVF that cost in the U.S. $20,000.
00:07:20
Speaker
and let them try the solution and give feedback. And now our conversation with clinics, with doctors is much easier because we have 130,000 clients who already tested and it worked for them. So the healthcare industry is more open up. However, of course, ah they're still more conservative and you know looking for solutions that have been in the market for 50 years rather than trying to innovate. This product has been created just a few years ago, right? Yeah, I was started seven years ago. Oh, seven years. That's already something, but still it hasn't changed for quite a while, for like 50 or 60 years. So what do you think helped the team to come up with this idea to design and develop the product?
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think that it really was driven by a personal story of our founders ah trying to conceive and have it. It's a story that you know when you will talk to any film tech founder is very similar. like It comes from a personal pain points and from personal journey and trying to understand okay like why this technology didn't change, what's wrong, like what else I can do before going to IVF.
00:08:36
Speaker
So it was really driven by, of course, innovating for personal needs. But at the same time, like our co-founder, we have experienced in the medical device industry. So it also helps to understand like what technologies that exist on the market can be applied just for another use case and how we can use it at home. And actually, for registration pass, it also helps because we but basically use the same um ah application of use as a previous technology, but different way to give an evaluation window and the fertility prediction. So, because we had a predicate to go through FDA, it really helped to speed up the pathway, because a lot of devices that emerge right now, unfortunately, um and for us, not just fertility, as they need to go through de novo, And I just was at the conference where startups presenting and a lot of them like you can see the timeline for technology to get to the market that takes like up to 10 years. So however, for example, ah some technology for
00:09:47
Speaker
straightening bones for women who are going through menopause or for some surgical equipment or cancer like ovarian cancer, cancer testing devices. However, they exist right now and they have clinical studies to get commercially on the market will take them like seven, 10 years.
00:10:05
Speaker
And that actually requires quite a lot of re vision to make sure that the idea that you envision and embody and design and develop is still relevant and not copied in five or seven or even more years. So by the way, what do you think about are the male fertility?
00:10:25
Speaker
It's a great question because ah when we talk with investors who are mostly men, they always ask like, oh, but the can I test my hormones? Because you know they have worry about their house. But overall, um the rest very big existing research gap in a women's house um that is not closed. We don't know exactly ah reasons of unexplained infertility. We don't know how things, hormones, and, for example, gut, microbiome connected. So there is much more unanswered questions regarding women's fertility. So we focus on on this aspect. We partner with other companies who do
00:11:10
Speaker
male analysis and there are great technologies that also emerge with the help of AI, how to analyze and how to help male partners to conceive because in a heterosexual couple, it's always like two people journey. So, we decided as a startup to focus on what we can provide women with their hormonal health and partner with companies who are doing male fertility from um Yeah, like some sample analysis perspective. So honestly, I envisioned in my head like an example of from a black mirror or something when the couples got matched to ah based on various data, probably including the data ah from um hormone analysis, like your device does, for instance. So what's your take on that?
00:12:04
Speaker
I more deliver in adjusting your sample so they can match with the person you want, you know, like a more construction on the DNA perspective and like doing different like a genetic test and genetic adjustments, but of course it's for for future.
00:12:25
Speaker
There are also ethical aspects of it. But we see like our our customers, our patients, um they sometimes go through interesting treatments. as They use surrogacy. They um use ah artificial reproductive technology. So i just working in this company, I learned so many things about fertility that I didn't know. So now ah when someone It's an interesting situation. and When I go to a different conference or medtech dinners, as soon as I introduce where I work and start to tell people like oh what we're doing, they immediately open up their personal stories and start to tell me, like oh, my wife goes through IVF. or
00:13:11
Speaker
something we adopted the baby because we can conceive. So it's very interesting that the topic was so much stigmatized for a long time, that people, when you give them this opportunity to like talk about it, it's very close to hard things that they wanted to discuss with something. So I believe that besides technology, ah there is much more in terms of education and just, you know, being open in the society about what people are going through. You know, now celebrities, for example, like to tell more about their stories because there are some things that people and don't mention about, like every fifth woman goes through miscarriage. And it's also something that you can't really like see on the media, on newspaper. So there is like, this is technology, some ethical moments that you always need to think about and keep in mind.
00:14:01
Speaker
So do you see some practical examples when a person um was really concerned about fertility and after using your device, it actually changed the course of their lives?
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um So very common use case when women use, for example, other period tracker apps. And in these apps, the algorithms that you ovulate on the 14th date. So whatever you cycle, whatever, you know everyone is different, but you ovulate on the 14th date. So of course, it's not true for many yeah women. And when they start to measure hormones, they can see that you know their they can be different, it can be late, it can be early. So they can adjust. ah timing for conceiving. And this is like very simple use case. But there are other situations we work a lot with the integrative and functional medicine practitioners. And ah the right case studies when, for example, women ah feel depressed, ah doesn't have energy, um there are some symptoms, it doesn't know what's going on, and no one can tell her. And so, she starts to test with our device and she sees that your estrogen level is elevated. So, because of this, a provider can prescribe here some supplements and some hormonal replacement therapy, and estrogen goes down and she immediately starts to feel better. She's not depressed anymore. So, if, for example, we will not look into this biomarker, I mean, probably someone will prescribe here anti-depressants, but it will not solve the root cause. It will like deal with the consequences. So, there are other things.
00:15:42
Speaker
we're working on for menopause and, for example, for autoimmune disease, because there is a correlation with some chronic conditions like PCOS, like people experienced, I don't know, like a gaining weight or acne. And just by simple changing the diet or impacting hormones that are out of the typical range, you can really help in a natural way to navigate your journey and just be healthy and feel better. So, of course, trying to conceive is very important and it's majority of our customers, but I can see that, you know, basically having this data in front of your eyes gives immediate feedback of what you can do and how what you do impacts on ah how you're feeling. and
00:16:29
Speaker
So I'd like to discuss your onboarding into the specifics of a medical device, of the marketing of a hardware product, of an innovative next-gen solution, because I know from my personal example that that's far from being easy or are just like a ah work in the park, because that requires quite a lot of understanding the domain, understanding the processes, understanding the specifics.
00:16:57
Speaker
And of course like the certification and and and so on and so forth like the different cycles for development different cycles for feedback loop different tools so what it was like for you to get on board it as a marketing professional.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, first of all, even if that I'm a woman, it was super difficult for me to understand all this like medical knowledge and how it works. And I remember founders like making for me a chart about a woman house, like how do you evaluate, how your hormones changing. And I didn't know. I was like 30 years old. I didn't know this information. And i i when I walked from the office, I called my girlfriend and I told her, can you believe?
00:17:40
Speaker
And we were like, oh, my God, why? We don't know this information. But for marketing, I think this is the most challenging part is not just ah selling a physical product, but selling a product in a category that didn't exist before. Because when you're selling in a car, like everyone understands why you need a car, and you're just like talking about how a different how features are different for this car. But when you sell in something sense that you know people haven't seen before, you don't need to talk about features yet. You just need to educate, like, why? What is the use case? Why you need it in your household?
00:18:17
Speaker
And also, we had a lot of discussion like how to become a household name, how to make it so um obvious for people like having, I don't know, like a Dyson in their home. And of course, it's the most challenging part. So our markets in A fourth is basically structured in a two-step funnel. Whereas the first step, we're not talking about device, we're not talking about mirror. What we're doing is basically educating about hormonal health. Because the concept of hormonal health is also something new. like
00:18:51
Speaker
if I would meet, I don't know, like stop a woman on the street and ask her, oh, what are your level of hormones? I don't think that she has an answer. Probably like, for example, if I would ask what is your, I don't know, blood analysis, for example, or like glucose level. So first we educate about it and that it's something that is really impacting on our body is so smart, like hormones are connected to mainly to sleep, to your weight management, to like your how your skin looks like. um So it's the first part. And the second part is introducing technology, introducing device, showing a lot of examples how to use it, how simple to use it. And yeah, just ah
00:19:38
Speaker
Connecting the dots, and how you can use this data and showing some success stories, know testimonials, working with doctors and organizations for credentials, and of course clinical studies is very important because for these new emerging technologies,
00:19:55
Speaker
If you don't have clinical studies to prove what you're selling, um it's very difficult to market and differentiate because there are other solutions, there are other biomarkers, you can test hormones, there are saliva, there is body temperature, mucus testing, but we believe that this Technologies providing is the most accurate but in order to show that it's not only what we believe but what data shows compared to blood sample compared to other things we run clinical studies on an ongoing basis.
00:20:31
Speaker
So you've started to outline the specifics of a go-to-market strategy for home-based physical product for a diagnostics tool. ah So beyond those testimonials, beyond the doctor's recommendations, what are the key aspects for go-to-market strategy?
00:20:51
Speaker
I think that the key difference is telling. I mean, maybe the storytelling aspect is also important for other products, but I think especially for this solution that ties to very sensitive topics about fertility and like personal health, cycle health. We're really focusing on um examples and storytelling, ah collaborating with influencers, collaborating with doctors and, like for example, athletes, to show on their example ah like how they introduced it and how they implemented it into their daily routine. and This year, we ran a PR campaign where we hired we offered um people to be hired as a hormonal tester sex hormone tester, and we paid $5,000 So was your ah the only job was to test your hormones and write a journey. yeah So we had more than 1,000 people applied. And we picked one lady who did this journey. We posted it on social media. ah We got a lot of getting still getting a lot of awards for this campaign. But basically, what we tried to do is to is to show how this hormonal tricking impacts your everyday life and what you can do with it.
00:22:09
Speaker
think this is the main differentiation because we let's talk about like AI. now When I joined you know as a technical founders, I think a lot of people tend to sell all the features and like tech and other stuff that inside or we have AI, we have 10 million data points, we have immunofluorescence, but people really don't care about it. They care what it can help me with and how i can use it for myself so i think like we're trying to be more emotional and ill show examples that's the main difference oh yeah that's actually one of the questions that i wanted to ask so what people really care about
00:22:51
Speaker
And yeah, of course, like with digital products, you can quickly validate some ideas, you can quickly iterate. But definitely when it comes to physical products, and especially FDA cleared, that takes quite different period of time to come up with changes.
00:23:08
Speaker
yeah From very early on, we built a customer's advisory board. Basically, all development happened with the engagement of customers. We had a community on Facebook and some beta tests. like Each new initiative, for example, we want to launch a new test one.
00:23:26
Speaker
So we just give it to consumer and ask them to test and give us feedback. those like The process, what challenges do they have on the usability side, what data they wanted to see, ah how they want to receive this data, and just like as they're doing right what we want them to do, because it's still a medical device you need to like pin in the cup and serve the stick put stick in the um device. It's super easy, but it's still like not something that is so easy as i open an opening app. So I think it really helped to understand consumer perspective, and we changed a lot of things. We also hear from them some suggestions about product design. For example, we had this like one-time usage cup for collecting rain that we thought people you know don't want to wash the cup.
00:24:13
Speaker
and they will just throw it. But our customers thought we were feeling bad of throwing like a plastic cup every time. We wanted something more sustainable, so we developed a foldable silicone cup. I know it's simple. It's not like a high-tech, but just some simple implementation that can show, first of all, for consumers that as a company, we hear what they say, and secondly, is that it's you know We carry about the same things that they carry about like sustainability, usability, simplicity, and just the device design. We got really good feedback about it. People like that it's smooth, it's an egg shape, it's easy to carry when you travel because you know as women,
00:24:59
Speaker
wear many hats and a jacket with a lot of stuff. So you wanted something that you know so easy, so smooth. You don't need to wait a lot. It's all all this input we use for product development.
00:25:13
Speaker
So how you actually build this pipeline of innovation starting from an idea where customers feedback into something that actually goes into design, development, manufacturing, delivery, distribution, and then feedback loop again.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. yeah You know, we're still early stage startup growing, but with some functions just start to build. But from beginning, customer support was basically a part of RID. They were sitting together and everything what they receive on the complaints or questions, they immediately pass it. They were like physically sitting together like on the same table and they're passing this feedback.
00:25:56
Speaker
And sometimes, ra z even we need to adjust this process because we had some failures when they passed feedback and implemented something immediately, and the marketing was like, oh, well, but we, for example, have different opinions. So, now, we have like a more smooth process of design control and the quality controls that any new initiative goes through. each stakeholder Each department leader and we need to approve.
00:26:22
Speaker
But I think like it was a really nice example of being fast and hearing consumer feedback and passing it to R&D. Of course, R&D are not marketers, so sometimes you know they did some changes on the product, and verlico but it doesn't look great or we don't like it. But it it really helped to establish the priority.
00:26:45
Speaker
to hear consumer needs and immediately do changes. Now, the process is, of course, as companies growing more complex. ah So, we have a system where a customer and the customer support actually converted into customer experience department. So, it's not just like tickets answering, but some other things. um So, they collect feedback, the suggestions,
00:27:08
Speaker
product and marketing team evaluate them and if they pass all the criteria they are getting sent to RAD to become a project and make these adjustments. ah Yeah, all right. So, ah yeah, actually, I also understand quite deeply the specifics of the physical product development. And there unlike in digital, where you can introduce updates really quickly, release the updates over the air and so on, ah with the physical production, that's a bit different, of course.
00:27:39
Speaker
And in your case, how fast are these iterations? How quickly you can introduce the changes based on your manufacturing and design development cycles? Yeah, it's a pain point. Of course, we can implement things on the software part much faster. Like, for example, they want to see an app in a different way. So that's the cycle of this change is much faster. Or we can do some adjustments on that um like a software for hardware side. But if it's related to analyzer, like analyzer mostly didn't change throughout these years because it's something that is like patented. The technology is inside.
00:28:17
Speaker
But when we're changing things around, but this project, of course, takes more time. They can take up to six months. like For example, now we're changing the shape of a wand, because we identify that sometimes people, you know it was the same shape from both sides. And when you test, you need to change the cup and insert the wand opposite sides that you put in the ring. So the ring doesn't come into the device. and doesn't lead to erosion. But some customers, because it looks very similar, they didn't realize it, and it leads to errors. So we need to find that we need actually to change the shape of a wand from different sides. You can't physically insert the the sides when youre that you test with. So I think this one is like more usability example is that now we're working on and launching. initiated it in the beginning of here and launching it right now. So you can see it's not a very fast ah the project, but it was ah pretty important for kind for customers and we hope that it will help to minimize errors and confusion.
00:29:26
Speaker
Oh yeah, I 100% relate to that. And I know from my personal experience about this complexity, inherited complications of the process. So yeah, good luck. um I know that that's not easy. So from my understanding, your team is quite distributed. But when it comes to the engineering and R and&D, do they have like some kind of a lab, or they work together, or work remotely? So what's your attitude and approach to towards that?
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, so our manufacturing was built. We have our own plant in China. It it really helped to control quality and iterate very fast because you know you not it's it's also more complex, but it gives ah better efficiency ah and much higher quality because we don't outsource. We we produce in-house. and so A lot of people are like located there, but we also have RAD in Australia, in Asia, like people who collaborate with them, because it's a very niche experience. so I think this like a concept of remote worked. When I joined, we still were sitting in the same office in the Bay Area, but now we are open to hiring talent everywhere, and it's really great because it it just gives much faster access to knowledge and to relevant expertise. So yeah, that of course team who needs to be in a lab, they're sitting together, ah but as a management and development like engineers, they are distributed. um In my professional life, I've also developed concept of at-home health monitoring devices. Besides, I follow the story of a startup, Prenuvo, that builds a full body preventive care like and MRI on demand. And your solution also gives users access to the medical data, and not all of them are qualified to translate it properly and make healthy conclusions without affecting or damaging probably the health.
00:31:30
Speaker
So what's your take on delivering medical information straight to the users by passing doctors? Yeah, as there um like our FDA registration, we're not diagnostic device. ah We can tell a fertile window and infertile window we can take. We can tell menopause stage prediction, but confirming everything you need to go to a doctor and maybe run blood tests or additional tests.
00:31:58
Speaker
It's how we can do it like legally. um But of course, we empower our our patients to have this data and start conversations with their doctors via through API connecting to different HRM systems.
00:32:13
Speaker
So we can pass directly. We have a professional dashboard for doctors and a lot of doctors were working with. They have this data and it helps them not just understand the picture much faster and better and monitor treatments that they prescribed, but also improve patient engagement.
00:32:30
Speaker
because you know like It's like with a diet. It's much easier when you see immediate results. you You stay on the scale and you continue to do something with a lot of medical treatment like for example similar to diabetes, like chronic conditions. If you don't see immediate feedback, what does it change?
00:32:49
Speaker
it's it's really difficult to maintain like patient engaged in follow protocol. So, we had a couple of studies so also with fertility clinics that use a simulated cycle that people are much more engaged to follow instructions to do what doctors tell them because both doctor and patient i seeing this data and they're in charge of what's going on. So, I know it's a common concern like what people will do with this data. Some of doctors, you know, not every doctor really like Nira and some of them also like, oh, it's extra job. Like people don't know how to interpret it. They can do some harm.
00:33:30
Speaker
But I, myself, truly believe that our health should be ah in power of our hands. Because if we don't know, like, I don't like going to the doctor and they do some tests and they don't even give me results, they're like, oh, you're fine. I don't know. I don't trust them. I don't know. I want to see all data points. I want to see all the results.
00:33:51
Speaker
I think it's, of course, you know, some people get confused. That's why we launched virtual clinic services. So if you can't interpret with standards, features on the app, your data, you can schedule your consultation with a doctor and doctor will help you interpret results. But really people like to see their numbers. the like We have community of 16,000 people. They like to go on a community to post their charts, discuss. And it really helps you. Even you see some spikes that you don't and don't know how to interpret kind of give you a push to find a practitioner who you can help with. And a lot of people identified. like Even one of the doctors that we started to work with is an interesting story recently.
00:34:38
Speaker
So when we start to work with doctors, we send them samples so they can test themself and understand how it works. So this practitioner tested her cycle, and she realized that she has hormonal imbalance. So she consulted with our chief of medical affairs, and she thought, like oh, maybe you have PCOS. And it's doctor. She didn't realize she has PCOS. So she went eventually to her doctor and the blood test, and it's confirmed.
00:35:06
Speaker
So maybe if she will not do this test, she will never know that it exists. Of course, it's conditions that a lot of people like can really live with. It's not something that you know you die tomorrow, but anyway, it gives you know if you know how to manage it properly, it just gives you much more energy in life and less symptoms that can be um not so great to experience. Right. But like, for instance, in the example that I made with that MRI on demand, let's put it like that, so ah the person could have lived a happy life without knowing of something progressing or sleeping in their bodies. So, so yeah, it's, I think it's very important to develop a proper approach towards that.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, I see i see ah this like revolution that is happening in health care, especially after COVID, from dealing with consequences to being preventative. Because suddenly, people realize that you know our is at least the US medical system designed to deal like that just financially by reimbursement site and many things, like they deal with cancer, really profitable, i deal with some chronic conditions, really profitable.
00:36:23
Speaker
But you know they don't want to deal with the core reasons. like Why is it happening? and Or maybe on the early stage, what can prevent? So I think like giving consumers this data, like from your example with MRR or other hormonal monitors, it really gives opportunity to prevent things.
00:36:40
Speaker
and start to treat coronavirus of disease rather than, you know, it's it's good for insurance and healthcare to get all these huge bills ah from going to hospital every month and not knowing what's going on with you. so But I see this change and I see also from their perspective on the conference, people talk more about value-based care and then the insurance will be basically motivated to cover things that resolve things, rather than just, you know, going and, you know, getting subscription, prescription for antibiotics, you take them, you don't know what was the reason that you feel bad, or just like ibuprofen. I think it's it's really will help to improve health of population.
00:37:24
Speaker
Yeah, this makes perfect sense. ah By the way, did you compare ah the results from the device with the results that people were are making in the labs? Yeah, we ran the study. It's actually required by FDA, so we compared data to serum ah for luteinizing hormone, and we're doing studies comparing, like, for example, we're finishing the CR studies compared to ultrasound.
00:37:51
Speaker
So like we use different biomarkers of to benchmark. Of course, it's not the same um as the blood results. And we don't encourage doctors to compare to blood results. Because in urine, we are measuring hormones metabolites. And in the blood, it's a little bit different. So it's not like apple to apple comparison. But what you can see is a pattern. And pattern usually is pretty aligned, like what people experience, like hormonal spikes in the blood.
00:38:20
Speaker
But if I can invent something to measure blood in a way that is not like, you know, ferranas or very easy for consumer, of course, it will be like next big big step.
00:38:34
Speaker
all right All right, moving onwards. So ah which role do you as a CMO play in the product design? And the second part of the question is what's your attitude towards using AI in the ah development of the products or in marketing efforts?
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, so, um of course, so like we deal with a lot of consumer feedback and the market analysis, market trends. So, this commercial input goes to our product roadmap and I collaborate with our product team a lot ah because we're like, oh, what's people looking for? What are trends in the market? What are other hormones we can test and how people will use it?
00:39:16
Speaker
So like this consumer resolution interviews is ongoing part. We also start, as company ah you know develops now, we're building a team of product marketing managers. So it's someone in between of a product who is mostly focusing on this. like site before go to market strategy and the marketing who is mostly worked on the content and pay channels of people who are thinking okay we have this technology how we will talk about it where we will talk about it what would be positioning and what claims do we need and what research and studies we need to run.
00:39:51
Speaker
It's very interesting how marketing evolves. For me personally, the concept of product marketing, I didn't understand it. This one was like, oh, it's something for SaaS. But now I see how it's important to bridge the gap between product and technical team and the marketing team. Basically, a product is responsible for what we say and why.
00:40:13
Speaker
And our marketing team is how to distribute this messaging, how to create creative campaigns, how to hire the right influencers, right partners to tell the story. um And so I'm overseeing all these collaborations and I'm proud that our team, even the product team is very engaged into marketing activities because We're using the brand, we were just discussing it yesterday, um and the brand experience. And what is brand experience? It's not things that you read on you know on social media or on you know press release. It's how you use the product, what you see on the app when you open the packaging, like what are your impressions.
00:40:53
Speaker
Like they even have a metric of people who post unboxing video on social media because we wanted to achieve this feeling when you open your device and you're like, wow, exciting. This is a message from a founder. You see that, you know, you're getting excited even before the test by this unpacking experience.
00:41:12
Speaker
So one person whom both of us are following to a certain degree, I'm referencing Scott Galway, predicted in one of his articles the death of CMO as a profession ah by Q1 of 2025. So my question is, how do you plan to survive?
00:41:32
Speaker
I really actually like this article and at some point I agree, however, I don't agree with everyone what he says. I think it's really interesting how Simo converts from just being a marketing, overseeing marketing operation to being a more like commercial operation and being very in-depth so with the product development. And I see it. I'm a part of CMO club. It's an international organization. And we have meetings where the CMOs connect together, go out, and discuss challenges. And I see that this trend actually happening in in the SaaS companies, not just consumer ah products. but
00:42:14
Speaker
and um This leadership um is about how to understand what I need and ah you know kind of impact product-driven marketing. When you develop products that people need, you get product market feed, and then you understand how to market it. And like the the last part is find the right channel and find the right message. But I think that the beginning is what we really need to build as a product. And of course, just you know having expertise in that user research, in in market understanding, in studies, services. It really helps to empower the product team with the knowledge of what people need and what they expect. I'm also working You know, a lot with a like product of development and sometimes I'm interviewing product managers and sometimes people come to interview and they're like, oh, you have product team under marketing? And I'm like, no, it's not like product team under marketing. It's just like marketing team is very closely collaborates with the product. So we are all the um working together.
00:43:23
Speaker
So what's your take on AI? Do you use like any synthetic personas or like some other Gen AI tools in your daily routine? Yeah, so for health care products, ah we should be very conscious of using AI. So all models that are used there with controlled output, ah it's more like ML, because so you know we have some responsibility. And actually, for FDA, when you register as a you know software, as a medical device,
00:43:50
Speaker
ah you You can go with generics, at least for now. FDA now is super focused on understanding what is the regulation behind. But for our algorithm, we use more like controlled output because you know we are responsible of how to interpret data and some outliners that can impact. But it's like one part that is you know, very regulated, very serious, and there are a lot of restrictions about it, and a lot of opportunities. So we will see how it develops. And because we can't learn, like, if, for example, for marketing, we can use GNI for some ads or copy, and we don't worry that it's hallucinating or something happens. Of course, on a medical device, we are very restricted by
00:44:36
Speaker
like what diagnosis we are providing and interpretation. And then the marketing were more open, so tasting everything that's available on the market. And I think our best use cases for AI is there um fraud prevention and customer support. so For fraud prevention, since we're a commerce brand and we're selling through our website, a direct-to-consumer, just ah utilizing tools that prevents charge bags, that prevents fraud, activities were so helpful to optimize on a
00:45:10
Speaker
ah refund rate and, you know, prevent all this like red flags from Shopify, but suddenly you have some like hacker attack. And another use case, so we launched the chatbot AI chatbot for customer support. And honestly, now it covers like 40% of tickets. And the quality ah rate is very good. So people are, of course, they're not They're quickly happy with the chatbot as a human, and it will be scary as they would. But anyway, it's almost the same, CCIT. And I'm really happy to see is that you know it's easy to scale rather than hiring just more and more agents to address. And also, for a consumer, it gives faster answer like in a minute.
00:45:54
Speaker
So I know that you mentor some startups in the Bay Area. So I wanted to ask, what ideas do you see cooking there ah that might define the industry as it progresses, as it develops, maybe some next gen ideas for new products or new services? ah So what's hot over there?
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah, i'm mentoring startups about go-to-market strategies, especially in the U.S. for a fintech accelerator and also working on a platform that calls Growth Mentor. um And I think that it's interesting trends that in EU are companies that try to launch in the U.S. And that's there just because the market is much bigger. um And regulation is a little bit easier than GDPR and all european European compliance. But anyway, um FDA also has a golden standard for them. So if they receive FDA, then it's easy to like get a registration in other countries.
00:46:54
Speaker
So really, it's it's really various. I see that there is more attention to some medical equipment, um to how to make a visit to ecologies more convenient, what equipment can be used for early cancer identification, for example, for breast cancer or for some ovarian cancer, for some like types of tissues, it's not so easy way to identify with the existing equipment. And also they are focusing on actually on the software side because AI and computer vision just gives much more precision. Again, it's not replacing the doctor, but it's just ah better supportive in terms of
00:47:39
Speaker
data and the recognition of potential, like fibroids or, for example, like dense tissue. And also, it's interesting that companies are trying to move, as we discussed before, more responsibility ah um to consumers. Like, for example, some cancer, like a Pap smear test that is like pretty so like regular for women. You need to do it like every year after 30 years old. But a lot of people like skip because they don't want to go to doctor and waste time ah so they're trying to bring it home so you can just take a sample at home and you know there are other um tests for example using menstrual fluid and a bath you know because we give a blood sample every month
00:48:26
Speaker
and So, why we don't waste the sample and use it, for example, for diabetes detection and also microbiome tests, getting you know more collaboration with the pharmaceutical companies and for drug discovery. Because in other trends that I see, now we're collecting much more data, like we have 30 million data points of hormonal data, like what we can do with it.
00:48:48
Speaker
like can we apply this data for drug discovery or maybe be for some supplements discovery just to understand more next step like okay that's what is happening and but what we can do with it and how we can improve health. There are more like You know, fun sex tech companies as that I'm talking about and there are some innovations in terms of like biofeedback and how we can learn from device again, like sending data to an app and learning from it how device can be personalized and experience can be personalized.
00:49:23
Speaker
But yeah, what I'm the most excited about is giving more access to data to patients and interpretation of this data with the potential collaboration with big companies that have much more opportunity to develop technology and solutions to treat diseases that were not treated before.
00:49:41
Speaker
Yeah, so of course, like whenever you deal with the startups, with the other companies, with the events, with media, so that's that that always inspires, pushes you to towards doing something differently, doing something new. For some people, washing dishes is a source of inspiration, so others like take good showers. So what inspires you? What's your toolkit?
00:50:06
Speaker
um Yeah, I think that the feedback that I'm receiving from our customers, from patients, is a big source of inspiration because when you see how people achieve their goals, achieve their family goals, they were trying to conceive for a long time and they didn't and now they were able to do it as LGBT families that is much more, had more access to get a child with the IRT, with artificial insemination. So it's like really empowering to wake up every day because again, it's not easy. Like startup is very stressful. There is like a lot of situations of burnout. ah But also I like to go to events and the conference and talk to people like here, ah see how they inspired, ah see their by energy in their eyes and how is everything moving ah to help women. I mean, it's like also I started to learn a lot about gender research gap gap about how underserved women's health area is. And since I started to work like five years almost, I see is that there are much more investments in this area. There are some seed funds that are specifically focusing on women's health.
00:51:27
Speaker
i companies, accelerators that are helping women's health companies. I think it's like really inspiring to see how people start to collaborate more. And also, I'm really grateful that you know there is of course competition and there are other solutions, but I've never been in the industry that's such collaborative as women's health.
00:51:49
Speaker
I think that founders, even though you are working you know on the same with the same audience and the similar products, they always open to share and open to collaborate, because now we're not dealing with just one product. We're really trying to move forward the concept, and like everyone will benefit you know if, for example, there are much more education about hormonal health. So we do a lot of partnerships with other hormonal health companies, even though our products are sometimes similar, just because it really helps to deliver a message to more people and get them educated. And then they, you know, as a second step, they can decide what product to use. Yeah, fair enough. Thank you.
00:52:32
Speaker
are So I think I have only one question remaining to you. Catherine, what's next? So I think for me, is one of the biggest challenges right now that we discussed a little bit is how to become next stage in all of the company, how to grow, how to scale, how to get into mainstream.
00:52:54
Speaker
um i one skill set that you need in the early stage of startup and there is completely different skill set that require when you grow and scale. And it's it's so about the team, it's about my personal qualities as a leader, it's about knowledge, it's about like what people would partner in strategic partnerships. So it's for me, it's probably ah the next challenge, how to adjust and that's also what keeps me engaged because it's always something you you never stop learning. and And of course, for the mirror, it's kind of similar because, you know, we started as a medical device for ovulation tracking, but in order to grow and become this household name, you need to offer solutions that covers more needs. And we believe that hormonal health is this path to the solution. So now we are launching menopause products this month and thinking about roadmap for the next year, like what are other applications? What are other conditions? Now, it will not be so obvious as fertility and abolition tracking, but we believe that there are more opportunities and how we can bring this hormonal health to become like a next
00:54:08
Speaker
you know ah devices that women have in every home and they're using it on a different season of their life, different stages of their journey and they see the value and doctors can address this information and help them to navigate their journey. I think this scale phase is very important because and we don't want to be a fan tech company. It's like you know it's too niche, it's too narrow. We want to become like a house health tech company you're focusing on women's health first. And it's not so easy, but very exciting.
00:54:41
Speaker
um That was Catherine Sakovich, an inspiring marketing leader, mentor, and a healthcare innovation professional. Thanks for coming to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Hey, thank you for tuning in to the show. You've been listening to The Month at Millions, a practical and inspiring show about innovators and emerging tech practitioners. Please subscribe to make sure you don't miss a new episode. I'm Alex Babko and you've been listening to The Month at Millions. Goodbye.